"What are you saying?"
She slipped to her knees beside the bed and drew his cold hands towards
her, but Joe Cumberland shook his head and mildly drew one hand away. He
raised it, with extended forefinger--a sign of infinite warning; and
with the glow of the lamp full upon his face, the eyes were pits of
shadow with stirring orbs of fire in the depths.
"No, I ain't dead now," he said, "but I ain't far away from it. Maybe
days, maybe weeks, maybe whole months. But I've passed the top of the
hill, and I know I'm ridin' down the slope. Pretty soon I'll finish the
trail. But what little time I've got left is worth more'n everything
that went before. I can see my life behind me and the things before like
a cold mornin' light was over it all--you know before the sun begins to
beat up the waves of heat and the mist gets tanglin' in front of your
eyes? You know when you can look right across a thirty mile valley and
name the trees, a'most the other side? That's the way I can see now.
They ain't no feelin' about it. My body is all plumb paralyzed. I jest
see and know--that's all.
"And what I see of you and Dan--if you ever marry--is plain--hell! Love
ain't the only thing they is between a man and a woman. They's something
else. I dunno what it is. But it's a sort of a common purpose; it's
havin' both pairs of feet steppin' out on the same path. That's what it
is. But your trail would go one way and Dan's would go another, and
pretty soon your love wouldn't be nothin' but a big wind blowin' between
two mountains--and all it would do would be to freeze up the blood in
your hearts.
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