Page "adventure" Paragraph 81

Thirty-five

they rode at a measured pace through the valley.

Dawn would come soon and the night was at its coldest.

The moon had sunk below the black crest of the mountains and the land, seen through eyes that had grown accustomed to the absence of light, looked primeval, as if no man had ever trespassed before.

It looked as Gavin had first seen it years ago, on those nights when he slept alone by his campfire and waked suddenly to the hoot of an owl or the rustle of a blade of grass in the moon's wind -- a savage land, untenanted and brooding, too strong to be broken by the will of men.

Gavin sighed bitterly.

In that inert landscape the caravan of his desires passed before his mind.

He saw them ambushed, strewn in the postures of the broken and the dying.

In vain his mind groped to reassemble the bones of the relationships he had sought so desperately, but they would not come to life.

The silence oppressed him, made him bend low over the horse's neck as if to hide from a wind that had begun to blow far away and was twisting slowly through the darkness in its slow search.