the overarching trees, the glistening leaves, the horse's glossy neck and
the man's face. It glowed beneath the brim of his hat like a portrait
executed on a background of velvet varnished by the match's gleam--it was
the face of Garland the outlaw.

His hand again on the rein sent its message and the horse padded
softly on through the arch of trees to the open road. Had it been
brighter Garland could have seen to the right rolling country, fields
sprinkled with oak domes, falling away to the valley, to the left the
chaparral's smothering thickness. Between them the road passed, a pale
skein across the backs of the foothills, connecting camps and little
towns. Farther on the Stanislaus River, rushing down from the Sierra,
would crook its current, to run, swift and turbulent, beyond the
screen of alders and willows.

The road ascended, and on a hillcrest he again halted and looked back,
listening. Unimpeded by trees, the thick air holding all sound close to
the earth, he could hear far-distant noises. The bark of a dog came
clear--that was from Alec Porter's ranch on the slopes toward the
valley. Facing ahead he caught, faint and thin, the roar of the Crystal
Star's stamp mill. Over to the right--the road would loop down toward it
at the next turning--was Columbus, gutted and dying slowly among its
abandoned diggings.

He avoided this turn, taking a branch trail that slanted through the
thicket, wet leaves slapping against him, the horse's hoofs sucking into
the spongy turf. It was still and dark, the air drenched with the odors
of mossed roots and pungent leaves. When he emerged, the lights of
Columbus shone below, a small sprinkling of yellow dots gathered about
the central brightness of the Magnolia Saloon. The night was so still he