He struggled for breath, and she thought he had slipped back into unconsciousness. But in a moment the faltering current of his speech began again. "Take the pistol--and go," he told her. "You showed me to-day how to give up--and I don't want to kill--your father--any more. I renounce it all! Ezram--forgive me--old Ez that lay dead in the leaves." He smiled at the girl again. "So don't mind leaving me. Life work's all spent--given over. Please, Beatrice--you'd just kill yourself without aiding me. Wait till the sun comes up--then follow up the river--" Unconsciousness welled high above him, and the lids dropped over his eyes. The gloom still pressed about the cavern, yet a sun no less effulgent than that of which he had spoken had risen for Ben. It was his moment of renunciation, glorious past any moment of his life. He had renounced his last, little fighting chance that the girl might live. And Ezram, watching high and afar, and with infinite serenity knowing at last the true balance of all things one with another, gave him his full forgiveness. The girl began to strip the wet clothes from his injured body. XXXVI The trail was long and steep into Back There for Jeffery Neilson and his men. Day after day they traveled with their train of pack horses, pushing deeper into the wilds, fording mighty rivers, traversing silent and majestic mountain ranges, climbing slopes so steep that the packs had to be lightened to half before the gasping animals could reach the crest. They could go only at a snail's pace,--even in the best day's travel only ten miles, and often a single mile was a hard, exhausting day's work. Of course there was no kind of a trail for them to follow. As far as possible they followed the winding pathways of big game--as long as these led them in their general direction--but often they were obliged to cut their way through the underbrush. Time after time they encountered impassable cliffs or rivers from which they were obliged to turn back and seek new routes; they found marshes that they could not penetrate; ranges they could not climb; wastes of slide rock where they could make headway only at a creeping pace and with hourly risk of their lives. They had counted on slow travel, but the weeks grew into the months before they even neared the obscure heart of Back There where they thought Ben and Beatrice might be hidden. The way was hard as they had never dreamed. Every day, it seemed to them, brought its fresh tragedy: a long back-trailing to avoid some impassable place, a fatiguing digression, perhaps several hours of grinding work with the axe in order to cut a trail. Sometimes the harness broke, requiring long stops on the trail to repair it, the packs slipped continually from the hard going; and they found it increasingly difficult to secure horse feed for the animals.