Arizona Nights

OLD

f the Box Springs, where we camped for some days at the dilapidated and ab

big stock corral. The cows and unbranded calves we urged into another. Fifty head of beef steers found asylum from dust, heat, and racing to and fro, in the mile square wire enclosure

ges, twenty miles to eastward, had softened behind a wonderful veil of purple and pink, vivid as the chiffon of a gir

rise upwards from the surface of the desert. Everybody was hungry and tired. At the chuck wagon we threw off our saddles and turned the mou

ur heels. The food was good, and we ate hugely in silence. When we could hold no more we lit pipes. Then we had leisure

y's bed and all of his personal belongings. When the outfi

blankets. At the end of ten minutes every bed was safe within the doors of the abandoned adobe ranch house, each owner recumb

ck a match, revealing for a moment high-lights on bronzed countenances, and the silhouette of a shading hand. Voices spoke disembodied. As the conversation developed, we gradually recognised the membership of ou

cs. Then we had a mouth-organ solo or two, which naturally led on to songs. My turn came. I

e a-sailing, a-

blow low, w

ailing to see w

oast of the H

he same instant a match flared. I turned to face a stranger holding the little light ab

up grey above his seamed forehead. Bushy iron-grey eyebrows drawn close together thatched a pair of burning, unquenchable eyes.

re fingers, and he dropped it into th

song?" he cried hars

singing?" he d

recovered from my

inging,"

very face. I underwent the fierce scrutiny of an in

it?" the stranger ask

plied; "it is a common e

ll. Finally the

id; "I never heard

?" someone demanded

ching for a place to sit down. As he bent forward, hi

the Cattleman answered

in hell does Colorado Rogers mean by b

man, "tell them-just as you told it dow

red Rogers. "

ttleman, "but I was with Buck Johns

s, "pass over the 'm

rivers or, as here, the fall of waters and the thunder-full, from the chest, with the caressing throat vibration that gives colour to the most ordinary st