THE MAN IN SADDLE
toward the right, he would have seen the trail, very faint, discernable only to the mountaineer's eye, gliding past, protected on either hand by rock and timber. Had he done this he might then and there have followed it, found alone the dark hills and the river, seen, alone, what he had been led to last night. So chance might have befriended him. Just as well, she might have led him astray. He had spent some strange days on a side track, but it had led him back again in one of those circuitous, long routes compounded of character and circumstance which men call fate, to this place where he had fixed his fancy first, with the gates growing nearer in front of him, and the blue garden of mountains beyond.
It was not an easy trail, and getting away on a trail into the mountains is much like getting away from the coast to sea. There was hard choppy going, tacking and changing before they began to get the hang of it, get into the swing of their pace, see the tops of eminences all around them like tops of breakers, lose sight of the road and all thought of roads, and rejoice to find themselves voyaging in the welter of heights. Carron's activities had begun, and plunging into them, he stripped himself of the vanities and comforts of life as a runner throws aside garments. Necessities appeared luxuries, and as the impetus gathered headway the necessity for
335
