Alan, looking back after the first few minutes, saw that Keok
and Nawadlook stood alone. Stampede was gone.
The ridge beyond the coulee out of which Mary Standish had come with
wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna's cabin,
and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan
set the pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven
pack-deer behind him, bearing supplies for the herdsmen.
Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men. He knew the driving force which
was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an
inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his
head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind
which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go
back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of
forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. He had almost fallen a victim
to his selfishness and passion in the moment when she stood at
Nawadlook's door, telling him that she loved him. An iron hand had drawn
him out into the day, and it was the same iron hand that kept his face
to the mountains now, while in his brain her voice repeated the words
that had set his world on fire.
He knew what had happened this morning was not the merely important and
essential incident of most human lives; it had been a cataclysmic thing
with him.
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