Slow-running water splashed softly over stones in the stream-bed.

From far down the canon came the mournful hoot of an owl.
The moment he lay down, thereby giving up action for the day, all these things weighed upon him like a great heavy mantle of loneliness.

In truth, they did not constitute loneliness.
And he could no more have dispelled thought than he could have reached out to touch a cold, bright star.
He wondered how many outcasts like him lay under this star-studded, velvety sky across the fifteen hundred miles of wild country between El Paso and the mouth of the river.

A vast wild territory--a refuge for outlaws! Somewhere he had heard or read that the Texas Rangers kept a book with names and records of outlaws--three thousand known outlaws.
Yet these could scarcely be half of that unfortunate horde which had been recruited from all over the states.

Duane had traveled from camp to camp, den to den, hiding-place to hiding-place, and he knew these men.
Most of them were hopeless criminals; some were avengers; a few were wronged wanderers; and among them occasionally was a man, human in his way, honest as he could be, not yet lost to good.
But all of them were akin in one sense--their outlawry; and that starry night they lay with their dark faces up, some in packs like wolves, others alone like the gray wolf who knew no mate.