Twilight deepened. The voice of the cataract came up the wind. Somewhere a dead bough creaked. He lounged, his elbow on the blanket, his head propped on his hand, and looked off absently across the darkening gorge. Did he not see once more, at the foot of a near and familiar slope, a small tent white and silent under the dew and starshine? His lips began to breathe a whistle. Presently it rose, still soft, sweet, tender, in Schubert’s Serenade. [Illustration: Music fragment] *CHAPTER XXVIII* *THE PRESSURE OF THE WILDERNESS* The wilderness has great adaptability. She fits herself to the man; she plays on his moods. To Stratton she became an inquisitor, tireless, implacable. She wracked him with his defeat; she taunted him with memories. At last the hour came, when, far on his retreat to the border, his worst perils past, he turned his horse and started back. There were nearer approaches to the Sound through the mountains; a day’s ride southeastward would have taken him to the railroad on the Columbia, but he chose to recross those miles of hostile country, where, to the horsemen of the plains, Sir Donald had long been a coveted and marked prize. He had not known the full value of Smith’s service on those previous trips; his Indian blood had been a passport where a solitary white man could not go; and, while he had something to gain, the outlaw on the night watch had been vigilant, safe. During this last journey it was only through strategy and an incessant fighting off of sleep, that Stratton had been able to save the chestnut, probably his life. And now, returning, he was forced to make wide détours, avoiding his former course. He spent whole days, watchful, under cover of shallow coulees, and pushed on warily at night, riding knee-deep through arid tracts of sage brush, hiding his trail when he could, in the meager channel of a stream, or the rocks of a wash, keeping away, always, from beaten tracks. In that great silence, where the report of a gun carried like a thunder-clap, he could not risk a shot at passing game. Once he snared a bird; again a squirrel; and several times he caught fish, which he ventured a small fire to prepare. But his food supply, divided into rations, and after a few days reparcelled, fell to almost nothing. Finally the chestnut’s hoofs struck the familiar upward trail to the Pass. His alertness quickened but his master’s dropped away. He rode indifferently, mechanically; his eyes gloomed retrospective under his black contracted brows. His face had lost its faultless contour; lines seamed it. He was like a man who had lived hard and fast, tragic epochs in brief days.