And that was why the rain lashed the earth so fiercely. He looked
down. After his death the wind would still continue to beat that muddy
water to foam. Ay, in that very place all would be as it was at this
moment. He would be gone, but the sky and the senseless earth would
remain unchanged. A sudden yearning seized him for the cabin among the
mountains, with the singing of the coffee pot over the fire--the good,
warm, yellow fire that smoked between the rocks. And the skins he had
left leaning against the walls of the cabin to dry--he remembered them
all in one glance of memory.
Why was he here, then, when he should have been so far away, making his
roof snug against this torrent of rain. Now, there would be no rain,
surely, in those kindly mountains. Their tall peaks would shut out the
storm clouds. Only this plain, these low hills, were the place of hell!
He swung the head of his horse to one side, drove deep the spurs, and
leaning his head to the volleying of the rain he raced in a direction
opposite to that in which Haw-Haw Langley had disappeared, in a
direction that led as straight as the line of a flying bird towards that
cabin in the mountains.
Now and then the forefeet of his great horse smashed into a pool and
sent a muddy shower of rain flying up. It crackled against his slicker;
it beat like hands against his face. Everything was striving--all the
elements of wind and rain--to hold him back.
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