Tombstone

What a sleeping child does to the man who finds her.

John Slaughter stepped inside a wickiup. Something that, in the shadowy light, looked a little like a sack of flour caught his eye. Curious, he reached out the muzzle of his rifle to give the thing a poke. The sack of flour gave a sudden little tossing movement. It was a baby—a tiny Apache girl perhaps a year old, fast asleep on a deerskin. Black hair was tousled on the little head; long black eyelashes lay against the cheeks of dusky rose; the breath came and went as peacefully as if the child were sheltered in its mother’s arms. All the noise of the attack and flight had left the baby’s slumbers undisturbed.

What a man does after he gets everything he ever wanted.

For twenty years since he had stood in thrilling triumph beside his newfound riches in the Tombstone hills, he had heard the still small insistent voice of the wilderness calling him back. He had assayed civilization and found only disillusion. The pleasures of wealth were not in its possession, but in the adventure of finding it. Society, with its pride, pretense, jealousies, and vainglory, was for others. Sweeter far to him were camp fire bacon and coffee in a desert than the luxuries of cities. One lonely purple mountain was worth all the world’s Broadways. So the rich man laid off his fine raiment, put on his old corduroys and his old red flannel shirt, buckled on his old canteen, and, with his old pick on his shoulder, went home to the wilderness.

What it means to fold your hand and go out smiling.

The game of life and the game of pool both over. Life for him had been in truth a game, and he had played it with the spirit of a cavalier adventurer, gaily, carelessly, recklessly, bravely—above all, bravely. He had cashed in his chips, shoved back his chair, and gone out with a smile into the eternal silence.