The Lonesome Trail — A Reader’s Guide

ou won’t get up, eh? Agin me too, eh? Take that, and that and _that_! I wished you was everybody in the whole world and hell to oncet, I’d make you beller now I got you down! Take _that_!”

The man with a roar of anger fell upon the pony, snarling, striking, kicking, but the pony only groaned. Its limbs could no longer support its body. When Antoine had exhausted his rage, he got up, gave the pony a parting kick on the nose, and started off at a dogtrot across the glinting ice towards the bluffs beyond.

Ever and anon he stopped and whirled about with hand at ear. He heard only the sullen murmur of the silence, broken occasionally by the whine and pop of the ice and the plaintive, bitter wail of the coyotes somewhere in the hills, like the heartbroken cry of the lonesome prairie, yearning for the summer.

“O, I wouldn’t howl if I was you,” muttered the man to the coyotes; “I wished I was a coyote or a grey wolf, knowin’ what I do. I’d be a man-killer and a cattle-killer, I would. And then I’d have people of my own. Wouldn’t be no cur of a half-breed runnin’ from his kind. O, I wouldn’t howl if I was you!”

He proceeded at a swinging trot across the half mile of ice and halted under the bluffs. He listened intently. A far sound had grown up in the hollow night—vague, but unmistakable. It was the clatter of hoofs far away, but clear in faintness, for the cold snap had made the prairie one vast sounding-board. A light snow had fallen the night before, and the trail of the refugee was traced in the moonlight, distinct as a wagon track.

Antoine felt the pitiless pinch of the approaching lariat as he listened. Then his accustomed bitter weariness of life came upon the pariah.

“What’s the use of me runnin’? What am I runnin’ to? Nothin’—only more of the same thing I’m runnin’ from; lonesomeness and hunger and the like of that. Gettin’ awake stiff and cold and half starved and cussin’ the daylight ’cause it’s agin me like everything else, and gives me away. Sneakin’ around in the brush till dark, eatin’ when I can like a damned wolf, then goin’ to sleep hopin’ it’ll never get day. But it always does. It’s all night somewheres, I guess, spite of what the missionaries says. That’s fer me—night always! No comin’ day, no gettin’ up, somewhere to hide snug in always!”

He walked on with head dropped forward upon his breast, skirting the base of the bluffs, now seemingly oblivious of the sound of hoofs that grew momently more distinct.

As he walked, he was dimly conscious of passing the dark mouth of a hole running back into the clay of a bluff. He proceeded until he found himself again at the edge of the river, staring down into a broad, black fissure in the ice, caused, doubtless, by the dash of the current crossing from the other side.

A terrible, dark, but alluring thought seized him. Here was the place—the doorway to that place where it was always night! Why not go in? There would be no more running away, no more hiding, no more hatred of men, no more lonesomeness! Here was the place at last.

He stepped forward and stooped to gaze down into the door of night. The rushing waters made a dismal, moaning sound.

He stared transfixed. Yes, he would go!

Suddenly a shudder ran through his limbs. He gave a quick exclamation of terror! He leaped back and raised his face to the skies.

How kind and soft and gentle and good to look upon was the sky! He gazed about—it was so fair a world! How good it was to breathe! He longed to throw his great, brute arms about creation and clutch it to him, and hold it, hold it, hold it! He wished to live.

The distant muffled confusion of sound had grown into sharp, distinct, staccato notes. The pursuers were now less than a mile away. Soon they would reach the river.