wind
rustled its torn, yellowed pages in a whisper that spoke to Gregg of the
ten-times repeated stories, tales of adventure, drifts of tobacco smoke
in gaming halls, the chant of the croupier behind the wheel, deep voices
of men, laughter of pretty girls, tatoo of running horses, shouts which
only redeye can inspire. He sniffed the air; odor of burned bacon and
coffee permeated the cabin. He turned to the right and saw his discarded
overalls with ragged holes at the knees; he turned to the left and
looked into the face of the rusted alarm clock. Its quick, soft ticking
sent an ache of weariness through him.

"What's wrong with me," muttered Gregg. Even that voice seemed ghostly
loud in the cabin, and he shivered again. "I must be going nutty."

As if to escape from his own thoughts, he stepped out into the sun
again, and it was so grateful to him after the chill shadow in the
lean-to, that he looked up, smiling, into the sky. A west wind urged a
scattered herd of clouds over the peaks, tumbled masses of white which
puffed into transparent silver at the edges, and behind, long wraiths of
vapor marked the path down which they had traveled. Such an old cowhand
as Vic Gregg could not fail to see the forms of cows and heavy-necked
bulls and running calves in that drift of clouds. About this season the
boys would be watching the range for signs of screw worms in the cattle,
and the bog-riders must have their hands full dragging out cows which
had fled into the mud to escape the heel flies. With a new lonesomeness
he drew his eyes down to the mountains.

Ordinarily, strange fancies never entered the hard head of Gregg, but
today it seemed to him that the mountains found a solemn companionship
in each other.

Out of the horizon, where the snowy forms glimmered in the blue, they
marched in loose order down to the valley of the Asper, where some
of them halted in place, huge cliffs, and others stumbled out into
foothills, but the main range swerved to the east beside the valley,
eastward out of his vision, though he knew that they went on to the town
of Alder.

Alder was Vic Gregg's Athens and Rome in one, its schoolhouse his
Acropolis, and Captain Lorrimer's saloon his Forum. Other people talked
of larger cities, but Alder satisfied the imagination of Vic; besides,
Grey Molly was even now in the blacksmith's pasture, and Betty Neal was
teaching in the school. Following the march of the mountains and the
drift of the clou