en and pink and white. A brook ran out of a ravine in
the huge bluff, and from this led irrigation ditches. The red earth
seemed to blossom at the touch of water.

The place resembled an Indian encampment--quiet, sleepy, colorful, with
the tiny-streams of water running everywhere, and lazy columns of blue
wood-smoke rising. Bostil's Ford was the opposite of a busy village,
yet its few inhabitants, as a whole, were prosperous. The wants of
pioneers were few. Perhaps once a month the big, clumsy flatboat was
rowed across the river with horses or cattle or sheep. And the season
was now close at hand when for weeks, sometimes months, the river was
unfordable. There were a score of permanent families, a host of merry,
sturdy children, a number of idle young men, and only one girl--Lucy
Bostil. But the village always had transient inhabitants--friendly Utes
and Navajos in to trade, and sheep-herders with a scraggy, woolly
flock, and travelers of the strange religious sect identified with Utah
going on into the wilderness. Then there were always riders passing to
and fro, and sometimes unknown ones regarded with caution.
Horse-thieves sometimes boldly rode in, and sometimes were able to sell
or trade. In the matter of horse-dealing Bostil's Ford was as bold as
the thieves.

Old Brackton, a man of varied Western experience, kept the one store,
which was tavern, trading-post, freighter's headquarters, blacksmith's
shop, and any thing else needful. Brackton employed riders, teamsters,
sometimes Indians, to freight supplies in once a month from Durango.
And that was over two hundred miles away. Sometimes the supplies did
not arrive on time--occasionally not at all. News from the outside
world, except that elicited from the taciturn travelers marching into
Utah, drifted in at intervals. But it was not missed. These wilderness
spirits were the forerunners of a great, movement, and as such were
big, strong, stern, sufficient unto themselves. Life there was made
possible by horses. The distant future, that looked bright to
far-seeing men, must be and could only be fulfilled through the
endurance and faithfulness of horses. And then, from these men, horses
received the meed due them, and the love they were truly worth. The
Navajo was a nomad horseman, an Arab of the Painted Desert, and the Ute
Indian was close to him. It was they who developed the white riders of
the uplands as well as the wild-horse wrangler or hunter.

Brackton's