The Indians, suspicious as ever of a possible attack, kept aloof from the fire, and lay down to sleep at a little distance outside the ring of light. Stephens established himself on the windward side of the fire, and set up the skin of the buck he had shot as a windbreak behind his back against the chill night air of the sierra.
Tired as he was with his long day's walk on foot, he lay there, warming first one side and then the other, and replenishing the fire at intervals, while he listened to the well-known sounds that from time to time broke the silence of the hours of watch--the sough of the night wind in the pines, like waves beating upon a far-off shore; the strange, nocturnal love-call of an unseen bird; the long-drawn, melancholy howl of a night-wandering wolf, seeking his meat abroad; and once his ears thrilled at the agonising death-cry of a creature that felt the sudden grip of the remorseless fangs of the beast of prey.
"Beasts of prey," he mused, "yes, that's just what we humans are too, the most of us, and we take our turn to be victims. Killers and killed. Well, if anybody's to blame for it, I suppose it's the nature of man."
Going back in his mind over the events of the day, he recalled the fierce desire to shed blood that had possessed him when he left the cacique and his fellows and set out to handle these Navajos alone. It seemed as if that much-angered man with the tense-strung nerves was some other than he. Now, peace was made, the captive was safe; and as he looked at the girl sleeping there unharmed, dreaming, it might well be, of her safe return home on the morrow, he felt a sort of mechanical wonder at the rage that had then filled his heart. He thought, too, of the shots that had been fired at him by the Navajo,--he had not cared to inquire which one it was,--and in imagination he felt the hot lead splash on his cheek again. He had been mighty near the jumping-off place that time, sure. And yet it had been all about nothing, so to speak. It had been a sort of mistake. He had wanted peace, really, and so had they; yet how near they had come to turning that little oasis into a slaughter-house. Fate was a queer thing. He looked up at the velvet black of the sky overhead and the endless procession of the stars. The moon had gone, but Jupiter still blazed in the western heavens. What did it all mean, and what was one put here for, anyway? He confessed to himself that he did not know; that he had no theory of life; he lived from day to day, doing the work that lay next him, and doing it with his might; but in the watches of the night he brooded now--not for the first time--over the old problem, "Was life worth living, and if so, why?" To that question he was not sure that he had any answer to give. Perhaps the secret might lie in caring for somebody very much, and at present he cared for nobody--very much--so far as he knew. Suppose that Navajo bullet had found its billet in his brain, thus it seemed to him in these morbid imaginings of the weary night watch, he would be sleeping now the last sleep of all, like that other victim in the cañon over yonder; and what was there in that that he should mind it? Perhaps it would have been better so--perhaps, yes, perhaps.