The Breaking Point - Page 112/275

He pulled the raincoat up around his shoulders, and lay back stiffly.

Then--he was not an imaginative man--he began to feel that eyes were

staring at him, furtive, hidden eyes, intently watching him.

Without moving he began to rake the cabin with his eyes, wall to wall,

corner to corner. He turned, cautiously, and glanced at the door into

the lean-to. It gaped, cavernous and empty. But the sense of being

watched persisted, and when he looked at the floor the field mice had

disappeared.

He began gradually to see more clearly as his eyes grew accustomed to

the semi-darkness, and he felt, too, that he could almost locate the

direction of the menace. For as a menace he found himself considering

it. It was the broken, windowless East wall, opposite the bunk.

After a time the thing became intolerable. He reached for his revolver,

and getting quickly out of the bunk, ran to the doorway and threw open

the door, to find himself peering into a blackness like a wall, and to

hear a hasty crunching of the underbrush that sounded like some animal

in full flight.

With the sounds, and his own movement, the terror died. The cold night

air on his face, the feel of the pine needles under his stockinged

feet, brought him back to sense and normality. Some creature of the

wilderness, a deer or a bear, perhaps, had been moving stealthily

outside the cabin, and it was sound he had heard, not a gaze he had

felt. He was rather cynically amused at himself. He went back into the

cabin, closed the door, and stooped to turn his boots over before the

fire.

It was while he was stooping that he heard a horse galloping off along

the trail.

He did not go to sleep again. Now and then he considered the possibility

of its having been his own animal, somehow freed of the rope and

frightened by the same thing that had frightened him. But when with the

first light he went outside, his horse, securely hobbled, was grazing on

the scant pasture not far away.

Before he cooked his breakfast he made a minute examination of the

ground beneath the East wall, but the earth was hard, and a broken

branch or two might have been caused by his horse. He had no skill in

woodcraft, and in the broad day his alarm seemed almost absurd. Some

free horse on the range had probably wandered into the vicinity of the

cabin, and had made off again on a trot. Nevertheless, he made up

his mind not to remain over another night, but to look about after

breakfast, and then to start down again.