Then up out of the gulf of the west swept a bellowing
wind and a black pall and terrible flashes of lightning
and thunder like the end of the world—fury,
blackness, chaos, the desert storm.
THE WHISTLE OF A HORSE
At the ranch-house at Forlorn River Belding stood
alone in his darkened room. It was quiet there
and quiet outside; the sickening midsummer heat, like
a hot heavy blanket, lay upon the house.
He took up the gun belt from his table and with slow
hands buckled it around his waist. He seemed
to feel something familiar and comfortable and inspiring
in the weight of the big gun against his hip.
He faced the door as if to go out, but hesitated,
and then began a slow, plodding walk up and down the
length of the room. Presently he halted at the
table, and with reluctant hands he unbuckled the gun
belt and laid it down.
The action did not have an air of finality, and Belding
knew it. He had seen border life in Texas in
the early days; he had been a sheriff when the law
in the West depended on a quickness of wrist; he had
seen many a man lay down his gun for good and all.
His own action was not final. Of late he had
done the same thing many times and this last time
it seemed a little harder to do, a little more indicative
of vacillation. There were reasons why Belding’s
gun held for him a gloomy fascination.
The Chases, those grasping and conscienceless agents
of a new force in the development of the West, were
bent upon Belding’s ruin, and so far as his
fortunes at Forlorn River were concerned, had almost
accomplished it. One by one he lost points for
which he contended with them. He carried into
the Tucson courts the matter of the staked claims,
and mining claims, and water claims, and he lost all.
Following that he lost his government position as
inspector of immigration; and this fact, because of
what he considered its injustice, had been a hard
blow. He had been made to suffer a humiliation
equally as great. It came about that he actually
had to pay the Chases for water to irrigate his alfalfa
fields. The never-failing spring upon his land
answered for the needs of household and horses, but
no more.
These matters were unfortunate for Belding, but not
by any means wholly accountable for his worry and
unhappiness and brooding hate. He believed Dick
Gale and the rest of the party taken into the desert
by the Yaqui had been killed or lost. Two months
before a string of Mexican horses, riderless, saddled,
starved for grass and wild for water, had come in
to Forlorn River. They were a part of the horses
belonging to Rojas and his band. Their arrival
complicated the mystery and strengthened convictions
of the loss of both pursuers and pursued. Belding
was wont to say that he had worried himself gray over
the fate of his rangers.
