nd, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to
breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through
the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone
bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank
showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over
the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's
chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and
wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They
passed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings
and high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the
sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road.
The many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from
their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be
known.

"There's a dance to-night," said the wife to the husband. "Hurry."

He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.

"I'm telling you to hurry," she repeated. "My new dress is in that
wagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than
you."

She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and
the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat
and spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen
voice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If
he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher
was still less to his mind.

"It ain't only her he's stopped caring for," mused Lin, as he rode
slowly along. "He don't care for himself any more."

PART III

To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day
its hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants
were rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male
and female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their
bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second
childhood which had set in.

Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and
foot, and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their
captains upon its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of
it. When the War D