He looked at the mountains, and saw the sun above their ridges, and the shadow coming from their feet. And there close behind him was the morning he could never go back to. He could see it clearly; his thoughts reached out like arms to touch it once more, and be in it again. The night that was coming he could not see, and his eyes and his thoughts shrank from it. He had given his enemy until sundown. He could not trace the path which had led him to this. He remembered their first meeting--five years back, in Medicine Bow, and the words which at once began his hate. No, it was before any words; it was the encounter of their eyes. For out of the eyes of every stranger looks either a friend or an enemy, waiting to be known. But how had five years of hate come to play him such a trick, suddenly, today? Since last autumn he had meant sometime to get even with this man who seemed to stand at every turn of his crookedness, and rob him of his spoils. But how had he come to choose such a way of getting even as this, face to face? He knew many better ways; and now his own rash proclamation had trapped him. His words were like doors shutting him in to perform his threat to the letter, with witnesses at hand to see that he did so.
Trampas looked at the sun and the shadow again. He had till sundown. The heart inside him was turning it round in this opposite way: it was to HIMSELF that in his rage he had given this lessening margin of grace. But he dared not leave town in all the world's sight after all the world had heard him. Even his friends would fall from him after such an act. Could he--the thought actually came to him--could he strike before the time set? But the thought was useless. Even if his friends could harbor him after such a deed, his enemies would find him, and his life would be forfeit to a certainty. His own trap was closing upon him.
He came upon the main street, and saw some distance off the Virginian standing in talk with the bishop. He slunk between two houses, and cursed both of them. The sight had been good for him, bringing some warmth of rage back to his desperate heart. And he went into a place and drank some whiskey.
"In your shoes," said the barkeeper, "I'd be afraid to take so much."
But the nerves of Trampas were almost beyond the reach of intoxication, and he swallowed some more, and went out again.
Presently he fell in with some of his brothers in cattle stealing, and walked along with them for a little.
"Well, it will not be long now," they said to him. And he had never heard words so desolate.
"No," he made out to say; "soon now." Their cheerfulness seemed unearthly to him, and his heart almost broke beneath it.
"We'll have one to your success," they suggested.
So with them he repaired to another place; and the sight of a man leaning against the bar made him start so that they noticed him.
Then he saw that the man was a stranger whom he had never laid eyes on till now.
"It looked like Shorty," he said, and could have bitten his tongue off.
"Shorty is quiet up in the Tetons," said a friend. "You don't want to be thinking about him. Here's how!"
Then they clapped him on the back and he left them. He thought of his enemy and his hate, beating his rage like a failing horse, and treading the courage of his drink. Across a space he saw Wiggin, walking with McLean and Scipio. They were watching the town to see that his friends made no foul play.
"We're giving you a clear field," said Wiggin.
