ed the spines from a prickly
pear, one by one. This was his attitude of thought, acquired in the
days when his problems were only those of wind and wool and water.

A thing had happened to the man--a thing that, if you are eligible,
you must pray may pass you by. He had become enveloped in the Indian
Summer of the Soul.

Dry Valley had had no youth. Even his childhood had been one of
dignity and seriousness. At six he had viewed the frivolous gambols of
the lambs on his father's ranch with silent disapproval. His life as a
young man had been wasted. The divine fires and impulses, the glorious
exaltations and despairs, the glow and enchantment of youth had passed
above his head. Never a thrill of Romeo had he known; he was but a
melancholy Jaques of the forest [100] with a ruder philosophy, lacking
the bitter-sweet flavour of experience that tempered the veteran years
of the rugged ranger of Arden. And now in his sere and yellow leaf
[101] one scornful look from the eyes of Panchita O'Brien had flooded
the autumnal landscape with a tardy and delusive summer heat.

[FOOTNOTE 100: In Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ the erudite
Jaques, one of the banished duke's attendants in
the Forest of Arden, is cynical and sarcastic.]

[FOOTNOTE 101: now in his sere and yellow leaf--_Macbeth_, Act V,
Sc. iii:
"I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; . . ."]

But a sheepman is a hardy animal. Dry Valley Johnson had weathered too
many northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real.
Old? He would show them.

By the next mail went an order to San Antonio for an outfit of the
latest clothes, colours and styles and prices no object. The next day
went the recipe for the hair restorer clipped from a newspaper; for
Dry Valley's sunburned auburn hair was beginning to turn silvery above
his ears.

Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a week except for frequent sallies
after youthful strawberry snatchers. Then, a few days later, he
suddenly emerged brilliantly radiant in the hectic glow of his belated
midsummer madness.

A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as
his wr