curse which has fallen on my life. 

If I had not known my father, if I had not loved him, if I had not
closed his eyes in desert silence deeper than the silence of the
grave, even if I could have buried and bewailed him duly, the
common business of this world and the universal carelessness might
have led me down the general track that leads to nothing. 

Until my father fell and died I never dreamed that he could die.  I
knew that his mind was quite made up to see me safe in my new home,
and then himself to start again for still remoter solitudes.  And
when his mind was thus made up, who had ever known him fail of it? 

If ever a resolute man there was, that very man was my father.  And
he showed it now, in this the last and fatal act of his fatal life.
"Captain, here I leave you all," he shouted to the leader of our
wagon train, at a place where a dark, narrow gorge departed from
the moilsome mountain track.  "My reasons are my own; let no man
trouble himself about them.  All my baggage I leave with you.
I have paid my share of the venture, and shall claim it at