the quickness of his movements, and the two guns with tied
holsters to permit of easy withdrawal, they were almost persuaded that
he might win.

"He's one of those long-chance fellows," surmised Jed. "He likes
excitement. I see that by the way he takes up with my knife play.
He'd rather leave his hide on the fence than stay in the corral."

"Well, he's all right," replied Senor Buck Johnson, "and if he ever
gets back, which same I'm some doubtful of, his dinero'll be here for
him."

In pursuance of this he rode in to Willets, where shortly the overland
train brought him from Tucson the five thousand dollars in double
eagles.

In the meantime the regular life of the ranch went on. Each morning
Sang, the Chinese cook, rang the great bell, summoning the men. They
ate, and then caught up the saddle horses for the day, turning those
not wanted from the corral into the pasture. Shortly they jingled away
in different directions, two by two, on the slow Spanish trot of the
cow-puncher. All day long thus they would ride, without food or water
for man or beast, looking the range, identifying the stock, branding
the young calves, examining generally into the state of affairs, gazing
always with grave eyes on the magnificent, flaming, changing,
beautiful, dreadful desert of the Arizona plains. At evening when the
coloured atmosphere, catching the last glow, threw across the
Chiricahuas its veil of mystery, they jingled in again, two by two,
untired, unhasting, the glory of the desert in their deep-set, steady
eyes.

And all the day long, while they were absent, the cattle, too, made
their pilgrimage, straggling in singly, in pairs, in bunches, in long
files, leisurely, ruminantly, without haste. There, at the long
troughs filled by the windmill of the blindfolded pump mule, they
drank, then filed away again into the mists of the desert. And Senor
Buck Johnson, or his foreman, Parker, examined them for their
condition, noting the increase, remarking the strays from another
range. Later, perhaps, they, too, rode abroad. The same thing
happened at nine other ranches from five to ten miles apart, where
dwelt other fierce, silent men all under the authority of Buck Johnson.

And when night fell, and the topaz and violet and saffron and amethyst
and mauve and lilac had faded suddenly from the Chiricahuas, like a
veil that has been rent, and the ramparts had become slate-grey and
then black--the soft-breathed night wand