To associate them in any way, as he thought of her
now, was little short of sacrilege. He was conscious of the change in
himself, for it was rather an amazing upsetting of the original Alan
Holt. That person would have gone to Rossland with the deliberate and
businesslike intention of sifting the matter to the bottom that he might
disprove his own responsibility and set himself right in his own eyes.
In self-defense he would have given Rossland an opportunity to break
down with cold facts the disturbing something which his mind had
unconsciously built up. But the new Alan revolted. He wanted to carry
the thing away with him, he wanted it to live, and so it went with him,
uncontaminated by any truths or lies which Rossland might have told him.
They left Cordova early in the afternoon, and at sunset that evening
camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland.
Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was
primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of
their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax,
and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the
swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north,
whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he
lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its
hold on Alan again.
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