pass
acquaintances who did not recognize him, and he was just as well satisfied
that they did not.

As is the way of unreflecting men, Ramon formed no definite opinion of his
life, but liked it more or less according to the mood that was in him.
There were bright, cool days that fall when, lacking work to do, he took
his shot-gun and a saddle horse and went for long rambles. Sometimes he
would follow the river northward, stalking the flocks of teal and mallards
that dozed on the sandbars in the wide, muddy stream, perhaps killing
three or four fat birds. Other times he went to the foot of the mountains
and hunted the blue quail and cotton tail rabbits in the arroyos of the
foot-hills. Once he and his man loaded a wagon with food and blankets and
drove forty miles to a canyon where they killed a big black-tail buck, and
brought him back in high triumph.

Returning from such trips full of healthy hunger and weariness, to find
his hot supper and his woman waiting for him, Ramon would doze off
happily, every want of his physical being satisfied, feeling that life was
good.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But there were other nights when a strange restlessness possessed
him, when he lay miserably awake through long dark hours. The silence of
the black valley was emphasized now and then by the doleful voices of dogs
that answered each other across the sleeping miles. At such times he felt
as though he had been caught in a trap. He saw in imagination the endless
unvaried chain of his days stretching before him, and he rebelled against
it and knew not how to break it. His experience of life was comparatively
little and he was no philosopher. He did not know definitely either what
was the matter with him or what he wanted. But he had tasted high
aspiration, and desire bright and transforming, and wild sweet joy.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} These
things had been taken away, and now life narrowed steadily before him like
a blind canyon that pierces a mountain range. The trail at the bottom was
easy enough to follow, but the walls drew ever closer and became more
impassable, and what was the end?{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

This sense of dissatisfaction reached its futile crux one day in the
spring when he received a letter from Julia--the last he was ever to get.
The sight and scent of it stirred him as they always had done, filling him
with poignant painful memories.

"This is really the last time I'll ever bother you," she wrote, "but I do