Temple looming
ever vaster before them, its mass of rock, of wind-blown, wind-carved
peaks lifted in sombre defiance against the stars. It brooded darkly
over the lower slopes, like an incubus it dominated the other spines
and ridges, its gorges filled with shadow and mystery, its precipices
making the sense reel dizzily. And somewhere up there high against the
sky, alone, suffering, perhaps dying, a man had waited through the slow
hours, and still awaited their coming. How slowly she and Norton were
riding, how heartless of her to have felt the thrill of pleasure which
had possessed her so utterly an hour ago!
Or less than an hour. For now again, wandering out far across the open
lands, came the heavy mourning of the bell.
"How far can one hear it?" she asked, surprised that from so far its
ringing came so clearly.
"I don't know how many miles," he answered. "We'll hear it from the
mountain. I should have heard it to-day, long before I met you by the
arroyo, had I not been travelling through two big bands of Engle's
sheep."
Behind them San Juan drawn into the shadows of night but calling to
them in mellow-toned cadences of sorrow, before them the sombre canons
and iron flanks of Mt. Temple, and somewhere, still several hours away,
Brocky Lane lying helpless and perhaps hopeless; grim by day the earth
hereabouts was inscrutable by night, a mighty, primal sphinx,
lip-locked, spirit-crushing.
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