THE WINDOW OF THE SPHINX
The afternoon had drawn toward a close, when Carron and the half-breed parted company, the "Buster" to Beckwith to wait until he had fresh instructions, Carron toward Raders. As he rode, he looked over the country. He had surveyed it before, seen it heavily wooded, deeply gullied, and put it down as improbable. Now he knew it impossible, at least as far as the quicksand went. This must disappear as the country passed from plain to forest, from shallow hollow to precipice; but to travel here without a trail, to chance crossing the transverse ravines, and spend Heaven knows what time at it, for the sake of a mere look into the cañon—that chance was too wide, even for him! There must be another way to come at it. There was always another way. His body innured to hours in the saddle and to great exertions felt the discomforts of the adventure but little. It was in his mind that he suffered. So easy the thing had looked and proved so difficult! In every direction he had tried he had found an obstacle, whether the dead wall of a rock or of a coward's fear of con- sequences; the quicksand of a river, or of a girl's mind. To say he was defeated, that he had given up, did not occur to him. The higher the difficulty, the higher he looked to meet it. He had gone too far into the thing to dream of failure now.
187
