He repeated
the words 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 marriage
certificate--I've had it by me all these years. I kept it--to
prove to myself I did right."
The old man uttered a broken cry.
Cameron stole off among the rocks. How long he absented himself
or what he did he had no idea. When he returned Warren was sitting
before the campfire, and once more he appeared composed. He spoke,
and his voice 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 his
comrade's burden. Wonderfully it came to him that he had also
lightened his own. From that hour it was not torment to think
of Nell. Walking with his comrade through the silent places, lying
beside him under the serene luminous light of the stars, Cameron
began to feel the haunting presence of invisible things that were
real to him--phantoms whispering peace. In the moan of the cool
wind, in the silken seep of sifting sand, in the distant rumble
of a slipping ledge, in the faint rush of a shooting star he
heard these phantoms of peace coming with whispers of the long
pain of men at the last made endurable. Even in the white noonday,
under the burning sun, these phantoms came to be real to him.
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