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"You see, you've not only made a man's place in the world, Clark, as
I've told you. You've formed associations you can't get away from.
You've got to think of the Livingstones, and you told me yesterday a
shock would kill the old man. But it's more than that. There's a girl
back in your town. I think you were engaged to her."
But if he had hoped to pierce the veil with that statement he failed.
Dick's face flushed, and he went to the door of the cabin, much as he
had gone to the window the day before. He did not look around when he
spoke.
"Then I'm an unconscionable cad," he said. "I've only cared for one
woman in my life. And I've shipwrecked her for good."
"You mean--"
"You know who I mean."
Sometime later Bassett got on his horse and rode out to a ledge which
commanded a long stretch of trail in the valley below. Far away horsemen
were riding along it, one behind the other, small dots that moved on
slowly but steadily. He turned and went back to the cabin.
"We'd better be moving," he said, "and it's up to you to say where.
You've got two choices. You can go back to Norada and run the chance of
arrest. You know what that means. Without much chance of a conviction
you will stand trial and bring wretchedness to the people who stood by
you before and who care for you now. Or you can go on over the mountains
with me and strike the railroad somewhere to the West. You'll have time
to think things over, anyhow. They've waited ten years. They can wait
longer."
To his relief Dick acquiesced. He had become oddly passive; he seemed
indeed not greatly interested. He did not even notice the haste with
which Bassett removed the evidences of their meal, or extinguished the
dying fire and scattered the ashes. Nor, when they were mounted, the
care with which they avoided the trail. He gave, when asked, information
as to the direction of the railroad at the foot of the western slope of
the range, and at the same instigation found a trail for them some miles
beyond their starting point. But mostly he merely followed, in a dead
silence.
They made slow progress. Both horses were weary and hungry, and the
going was often rough and even dangerous. But for Dick's knowledge of
the country they would have been hopelessly lost. Bassett, however,
although tortured with muscular soreness, felt his spirits rising as the
miles were covered, and there was no sign of the pursuit.