SON OF THE WIND
motion left other necessities behind. Food was the first, for he had started at daybreak with most casual foraging. He had forgotten there could be such a thing as set hours when people gathered at table. Eating had become an act that gave a man energy for greater acts. It was something to be snatched at a moment by the way. As for sleeping, the owls had more anticipation of it than he when night brought the sky black above them, and the moon like an apple of silver. He, who had tossed on a bed and thought of a woman, now felt the rocking saddle under him, heard the river, heard the wind in his ears, saw the rising stars.
Men and horses, they slipped in among the black hills at eight in the evening, too late for work or for anything but turning in. Men and horses camped some half mile below the ford, Carron himself lying close in the cave. He had expected nothing for that night, yet when nothing came, no sound challenging silence, no shadow on the broad moonlighted open, he experienced a sense of defeat. His heart was a house of doubts. Reason asserted that it could not be every night the creature came to drink. He might watch out two nights, three perhaps, before the moment came. The fear remained in his mind that before it came again he might watch for ever.
He contested this idea, refused to believe it, reck-
336
