Cautiously the horse worked sideways down the ridge, slipping and checking short as the loose stones slithered beneath his feet.  At the bottom of the hollow Corliss reined up and shouted.  The wind whipped his call to a thin shred of sound that was swept away in the roar of the storm.  Again he shouted.  As though in answer there came a burning flash of blue.  The dripping trees surrounding the hollow jumped into view to be blotted from sight as the succeeding crash of thunder diminished to far titanic echoes.  Where Soper’s cabin had stood there was a wet, glistening heap of fallen logs and rafters, charred and twisted.  The lightning flash had revealed more to the rider than the desolation of the burned and abandoned homestead.  He saw with instant vividness the wrecked framework of his own plans.  He heard the echo of Fadeaway’s sneering laugh in the fury of the wind.  He told himself that he had been duped and that he deserved it.  Lacking physical strength to carry him through to a place of tentative safety, he gave up, and credited his sudden regret to true repentance rather than to weakness.  He would return to the Concho, knowing that his brother would forgive him.  He wept as he thought of his attitude of the repentant and broken son returning in sorrow to atone for his sin and shame.  He magnified his wrongdoing to heroic proportions endeavoring to filch some sentimental comfort from the romantic.  He it was that needed the sympathy of the world and not his brother John; John was a plodder, a clod, good enough, but incapable of emotion, or the finer feelings.  And Eleanor Loring . . . she could have saved him from all this.  He had begun well; had written acceptable verse . . . then had come her refusal to marry him.  What a fool he had been through it all!  The wind and rain chastised his emotional intoxication, and he turned shivering to look for shelter.  Dismounting, he crept beneath a low spruce and shivered beneath the scant covering of his saddle-blanket.  To-morrow the sun would shine on a new world.  He would arise and conquer his temptation.  As he drifted to troubled sleep he knew, deep in his heart, that despite his heroics he would at that moment have given the little canvas sack of his brother’s money for the obliterating warmth of intoxication.

With the morning sun he rose and saddled.  About to mount, his stiffened muscles blundered.  He slipped and fell.  The horse, keen with hunger, jumped away from him and trotted down the trail.  He followed shouting.  His strength gave out and he gave up the chase, wondering where the horse would go.  Stumbling along the slippery trail, he cursed his clumsiness.  A chill sweat gathered on his face.  His legs trembled and he was forced to rest frequently.  Crossing a stream, he stooped and drank.  Then he toiled on, eagerly scanning the hoof-prints in the rain-gutted trail.