The life he owed to August Naab, the strength built up by
the old man's knowledge of the healing power of plateau and range--these
lay in a long curve between the day Naab had lifted him out of the White
Sage trail and this day of the Mormon's extremity. A long curve with
Holderness's insulting blow at the beginning, his murder of a beloved
friend at the end! For Hare remembered the blow, and never would he
forget Dave's last words. Yet unforgetable as these were, it was duty
rather than revenge that called him. This was August Naab's hour of
need. Hare knew himself to be the tool of inscrutable fate; he was the
one to fight the old desert-scarred Mormon's battle. Hare recalled how
humbly he had expressed his gratitude to Naab, and the apparent
impossibility of ever repaying him, and then Naab's reply: "Lad, you can
never tell how one man may repay another." Hare could pay his own debt
and that of the many wanderers who had drifted across the sands to find a
home with the Mormon. These men stirred in their graves, and from out
the shadow of the cliff whispered the voice of Mescal's nameless father:
"Is there no one to rise up for this old hero of the desert?"
Softly Hare slipped into his room.
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