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The Lone Star Ranger-Part18_Zane Gray(1872-1939)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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brakes. What hellish thing drives me? Why can't I end it all?



What is left? Only that damned unquenchable spirit of the

gun-fighter to live--to hang on to miserable life--to have no



fear of death, yet to cling like a leach--to die as

gun-fighters seldom die, with boots off! Bain, you were first,



and you're long avenged. I'd change with you. And Sellers, you

were last, and you're avenged. And you others--you're avenged.



Lie quiet in your graves and give me peace!"

But they did not lie quiet in their graves and give him peace.



A group of specters trooped out of the shadows of dusk and,

gathering round him, escorted him to his bed.



When Duane had been riding the trails passion-bent to escape

pursuers, or passion-bent in his search, the constant action



and toil and exhaustion made him sleep. But when in hiding, as

time passed, gradually he required less rest and sleep, and his



mind became more active. Little by little his phantoms gained

hold on him, and at length, but for the saving power of his



dreams, they would have claimed him utterly.

How many times he had said to himself: "I am an intelligent



man. I'm not crazy. I'm in full possession of my faculties. All

this is fancy--imagination--conscience. I've no work, no duty,



no ideal, no hope--and my mind is obsessed, thronged with

images. And these images naturally are of the men with whom I



have dealt. I can't forget them. They come back to me, hour

after hour; and when my tortured mind grows weak, then maybe



I'm not just right till the mood wears out and lets me sleep."

So he reasoned as he lay down in his comfortable camp. The



night was star-bright above the canon-walls, darkly shadowing

down between them. The insects hummed and chirped and thrummed



a continuous thick song, low and monotonous. Slow-running water

splashed softly over stones in the stream-bed. From far down



the canon came the mournful hoot of an owl. The moment he lay

down, thereby giving up action for the day, all these things



weighed upon him like a great heavy mantle of loneliness. In

truth, they did not constituteloneliness.



And he could no more have dispelled thought than he could have

reached out to touch a cold, bright star.



He wondered how many outcasts like him lay under this

star-studded, velvety sky across the fifteen hundred miles of



wild country between El Paso and the mouth of the river. A vast

wild territory--a refuge for outlaws! Somewhere he had heard or



read that the Texas Rangers kept a book with names and records

of outlaws--three thousand known outlaws. Yet these could



scarcely be half of that unfortunate horde which had been

recruited from all over the states. Duane had traveled from



camp to camp, den to den, hiding-place to hiding-place, and he

knew these men. Most of them were hopeless criminals; some were



avengers; a few were wronged wanderers; and among them

occasionally was a man, human in his way, honest as he could



be, not yet lost to good.

But all of them were akin in one sense--their outlawry; and



that starry night they lay with their dark faces up, some in

packs like wolves, others alone like the gray wolf who knew no



mate. It did not make much difference in Duane's thought of

them that the majority were steeped in crime and brutality,



more often than not stupid from rum, incapable of a fine

feeling, just lost wild dogs.



Duane doubted that there was a man among them who did not

realize his moral wreck and ruin. He had met poor, half witted



wretches who knew it. He believed he could enter into their

minds and feel the truth of all their lives--the hardened



outlaw, coarse, ignorant, bestial, who murdered as Bill Black

had murdered, who stole for the sake of stealing, who craved



money to gamble and drink, defiantly ready for death, and, like

that terrible outlaw, Helm, who cried out on the scaffold, "Let



her rip!"

The wild youngsters seeking notoriety and reckless adventure;



the cowboys with a notch on their guns, with boastful pride in

the knowledge that they were marked by rangers; the crooked men



from the North, defaulters, forgers, murderers, all pale-faced,

flat-chested men not fit for that wilderness and not surviving;



the dishonest cattlemen, hand and glove with outlaws, driven

from their homes; the old grizzled, bow-legged genuine



rustlers--all these Duane had come in contact with, had watched




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