by Zane Grey
III
As thought and feeling multiplied, Cameron was overwhelmed. Beyondbelief, indeed, was it that out of the millions of men in the world twowho had never seen each other could have been driven into the desert bymemory of the same woman. It brought the past so close. It showedCameron how inevitably all his spiritual life was governed by what hadhappened long ago. That which made life significant to him was awandering in silent places where no eye could see him with his secret.Some fateful chance had thrown him with the father of the girl he hadwrecked. It was incomprehensible; it was terrible. It was the onething of all possible happenings in the world of chance that bothfather and lover would have found unendurable.
Cameron's pain reached to despair when he felt this relation betweenWarren and himself. Something within him cried out to him to revealhis identity. Warren would kill him; but it was not fear of death thatput Cameron on the rack. He had faced death too often to be afraid.It was the thought of adding torture to this long-suffering man. Allat once Cameron swore that he would not augment Warren's trouble, orlet him stain his hands with blood. He would tell the truth of Nell'ssad story and his own, and make what amends he could.
Then Cameron's thought shifted from father to daughter. She wassomewhere beyond the dim horizon line. In those past lonely hours bythe campfire his fancy had tortured him with pictures of Nell. But hisremorseful and cruel fancy had lied to him. Nell had struggled upwardout of menacing depths. She had reconstructed a broken life. And nowshe was fighting for the name and happiness of her child. Little Nell!Cameron experienced a shuddering ripple in all his being--the physicalrack of an emotion born of a new and strange consciousness.
As Cameron gazed out over the blood-red, darkening desert suddenly thestrife in his soul ceased. The moment was one of incalculable change,in which his eyes seemed to pierce the vastness of cloud and range, andmystery of gloom and shadow--to see with strong vision the illimitablespace before him. He felt the grandeur of the desert, its simplicity,its truth. He had learned at last the lesson it taught. No longerstrange was his meeting and wandering with Warren. Each had marched inthe steps of destiny; and as the lines of their fates had beeninextricably tangled in the years that were gone, so now their stepshad crossed and turned them toward one common goal. For years they hadbeen two men marching alone, answering to an inward driving search, andthe desert had brought them together. For years they had wandered alonein silence and solitude, where the sun burned white all day and thestars burned white all night, blindly following the whisper of aspirit. But now Cameron knew that he was no longer blind, and in thisflash of revelation he felt that it had been given him to help Warrenwith his burden.
He returned to camp trying to evolve a plan. As always at that longhour when the afterglow of sunset lingered in the west, Warren ploddedto and fro in the gloom. All night Cameron lay awake thinking.
In the morning, when Warren brought the burros to camp and beganpreparations for the usual packing, Cameron broke silence.
"Pardner, your story last night made me think. I want to tell yousomething about myself. It's hard enough to be driven by sorrow forone you've loved, as you've been driven; but to suffer sleepless andeternal remorse for the ruin of one you've loved as I havesuffered--that is hell.... Listen. In my younger days--it seems longnow, yet it's not so many years--I was wild. I wronged the sweetestand loveliest girl I ever knew. I went away not dreaming that anydisgrace might come to her. Along about that time I fell into terriblemoods--I changed--I learned I really loved her. Then came a letter Ishould have gotten months before. It told of her trouble--importunedme to hurry to save her. Half frantic with shame and fear, I got amarriage certificate and rushed back to her town. She was gone--hadbeen gone for weeks, and her disgrace was known. Friends warned me tokeep out of reach of her father. I trailed her--found her. I marriedher. But too late!... She would not live with me. She left me--Ifollowed her west, but never found her."
Warren leaned forward a little and looked into Cameron's eyes, as ifsearching there for the repentance that might make him less deservingof a man's scorn.
Cameron met the gaze unflinchingly, and again began to speak:
"You know, of course, how men out here somehow lose old names, oldidentities. It won't surprise you much to learn my name really isn'tCameron, as I once told you."
Warren stiffened upright. It seemed that there might have been ablank, a suspension, between his grave interest and some strange moodto come.
Cameron felt his heart bulge and contract in his breast; all his bodygrew cold; and it took tremendous effort for him to make his lips formwords.
"Warren, I'm the man you're hunting. I'm Burton. I was Nell's lover!"
The old man rose and towered over Cameron, and then plunged down uponhim, and clutched at his throat with terrible stifling hands. The harshcontact, the pain awakened Cameron to his peril before it was too late.Desperate fighting saved him from being hurled to the ground andstamped and crushed. Warren seemed a maddened giant. There was areeling, swaying, wrestling struggle before the elder man began toweaken. The Cameron, buffeted, bloody, half-stunned, panted for speech.
"Warren--hold on! Give me--a minute. I married Nell. Didn't you knowthat?... I saved the child!"
Cameron felt the shock that vibrated through Warren. He repeated thewords again and again. As if compelled by some resistless power,Warren released Cameron, and, staggering back, stood with uplifted,shaking hands. In his face was a horrible darkness.
"Warren! Wait--listen!" panted Cameron. "I've got that marriagecertificate--I've had it by me all these years. I kept it--to prove tomyself I did right."
The old man uttered a broken cry.
Cameron stole off among the rocks. How long he absented himself orwhat he did he had no idea. When he returned Warren was sitting beforethe campfire, and once more he appeared composed. He spoke, and hisvoice had a deeper note; but otherwise he seemed as usual.
They packed the burros and faced the north together.
Cameron experienced a singular exaltation. He had lightened hiscomrade's burden. Wonderfully it came to him that he had alsolightened his own. From that hour it was not torment to think of Nell.Walking with his comrade through the silent places, lying beside himunder the serene luminous light of the stars, Cameron began to feel thehaunting presence of invisible things that were real to him--phantomswhispering peace. In the moan of the cool wind, in the silken seep ofsifting sand, in the distant rumble of a slipping ledge, in the faintrush of a shooting star he heard these phantoms of peace coming withwhispers of the long pain of men at the last made endurable. Even inthe white noonday, under the burning sun, these phantoms came to bereal to him. In the dead silence of the midnight hours he heard thembreathing nearer on the desert wind--nature's voices of motherhood,whispers of God, peace in the solitude.
