th saw that his head was bound in something white and
that it bore a red stain, but he held himself well in the saddle. He was
not the man to heed a tumble. He urged the horse forward, never looking
towards the tree-trunks, his face white and strained with anxiety as he
scoured the trail for evidences of Kitty. The horse, with a keener sense
than his master, shied slightly as he passed the group of pines where
Judith stood; but Peter's glance was for the open trail, and as she heard
him canter by, so close that she could have touched his stirrup with her
hand, it seemed as if he must hear the beating of her heart.

"Oh, blind eyes, and ears that will not hear, and heart that has forgotten
how to beat! Yes, go to that pale, cold girl! You speak one language, and
life for you is the way of little things!"

She waited till the last sound of the horse's hoofs had died away and all
was still in the tremulous green of the forest. Judith's mind was busy
with the image of their meeting, the man bringing the joy of his youth to
the calm divinity who could feel no thrill of fear in his absence. She
broke into the running gait and hurried through the forest to the Daxes'.

XVI

In The Land Of The Red Silence

The beef-herd, that had been the pivotal point of the round-up and had
made the mighty plain echo to its stampings and bellowings, beating up
simooms that choked it with thirst, blinded it with dust, confounding
itself on every side by the very fury of its blind force, had trailed for
a week, tractable as toys in the hands of children. Little had happened to
vary the monotony for the cow-punchers that handled the herd--they grazed,
guarded, watered, night-herded the cattle day after day, night after
night. Pasturage had been sufficient, if not abundant. The creeks were
running low and slimy with the advance of summer, but there had been
sufficient water to let the herd drink its fill at least once a day.

The outfit ate its "sow-belly," soda-biscuit, and coffee three times a
day, and smoked its pipes, but was a little shy on yarns round the
camp-fire.

"This yere outfit don't lather none," commented the cook to the
horse-wrangler, over the smoke of an early morning fire.

"Don't lather no more than a chunk of wood," agreed the horse-wrangler.
"That's the trouble with a picked-up outfit like this. Catch 'W-square'
men kowtowing to a 'XXX' boss, even if he is only acting foreman."

Sim