“Help yourself,” said the boy. “What
time d’you want me to wake you up?”
“Never mind; I wake up automatic. S’long,
Bud.”
He stretched out on the blankets and was instantly
asleep.
A TOUCH OF CRIMSON
At the end of three hours he awoke as sharply as though
an alarm were clamouring at his ear. There was
no elaborate preparation for renewed activities.
A single yawn and stretch and he was again on his feet.
Since the boy was not in sight he cooked himself an
enormous meal, devoured it, and went out to the mustang.
The roan greeted him with a volley from both heels
that narrowly missed the head of Nash, but the cowpuncher
merely smiled tolerantly.
“Feelin’ fit agin, eh, damn your soul?”
he said genially, and picking up a bit of board, fallen
from the side of the shed, he smote the mustang mightily
along the ribs. The mustang, as if it recognized
the touch of the master, pricked up one ear and side-stepped.
The brief rest had filled it with all the old, vicious
energy.
For once more, as soon as they rode clear of the door,
there ensued a furious struggle between man and beast.
The man won, as always, and the roan, dropping both
ears flat against its neck, trotted sullenly out across
the hills.
In that monotony of landscape, one mile exactly like
the other, no landmarks to guide him, no trail to
follow, however faintly worn, it was strange to see
the cowpuncher strike out through the vast distances
of the mountain-desert with as much confidence as
if he were travelling on a paved street in a city.
He had not even a compass to direct him but he seemed
to know his way as surely as the birds know the untracked
paths of the air in the seasons of migration.
Straight on through the afternoon and during the long
evening he kept his course at the same unvarying dog-trot
until the flush of the sunset faded to a stern grey
and the purple hills in the distance turned blue with
shadows. Then, catching the glimmer of a light
on a hillside, he turned toward it to put up for the
night.
In answer to his call a big man with a lantern came
to the door and raised his light until it shone on
a red, bald head and a portly figure. His welcome
was neither hearty nor cold; hospitality is expected
in the mountain-desert. So Nash put up his horse
in the shed and came back to the house.
The meal was half over, but two girls immediately
set a plate heaped with fried potatoes and bacon and
flanked by a mighty cup of jetblack coffee on one
side and a pile of yellow biscuits on the other.
He nodded to them, grunted by way of expressing thanks,
and sat down to eat.
Beside the tall father and the rosy-faced mother,
the family consisted of the two girls, one of them
with her hair twisted severely close to her head,
wearing a man’s blue cotton shirt with the sleeves
rolled up to a pair of brown elbows. Evidently
she was the boy of the family and to her fell the
duty of performing the innumerable chores of the ranch,
for her hands were thick with work and the tips of
the fingers blunted. Also she had that calm,
self-satisfied eye which belongs to the workingman
who knows that he has earned his meal.
