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The first eruptions of lava were long ago, and they were poured out upon a surface 2,000 feet or more higher than the general surface now found. After the first eruptions of coulees the lands round about were degraded by rains and rivers.
Hour after hour they rode in silence, following a trail that wound in easy curves about the bases of hillocks and small buttes, and dipped and slanted down the precipitous sides of deep coulees where the horses' feet splashed loudly in the shallow waters of fords.
I can protect my body and my shadow the Good God has come to Wo-pe-ni-in." II. The Brown Bat Proves Itself Big Hair and his son, White Otter, rode home slowly, back through the coulees and the pines and the sage-brush to the camp of the Chis-chis-chash. The squaws took their ponies when they came to their lodge.
At the moment they were crossing just along the head of one of the coulees, and the struggles of the horse, which was upon the side next to the gully, rapidly dragged his mate down also. In a flash Franklin saw that he could not get the team back upon the rim, and knew that he was confronted with an ugly accident.
After a while it would grow quite black, and the range and the cattle and the riding over hills and into coulées untamed would all be blotted out; dead and buried deep in the past, and with the careless, plodding feet of the plowman trampling unthinkingly upon the grave.
Before him spread the plain, broken here and there with coulees and clumps of bush. A partly fenced roadway, with some scattered houses on the river bank, but no barbed-wire entanglements, impeded his movements. The introduction of such pleasant devices was left for a higher civilization! The column was in motion.
It soon began to grow dark; and long before Garth could hope they had nearly covered the distance between the two coulées, it became totally dark; and he could no longer read the face of his compass. Fortunately the wind held steady from the north; he struggled ahead, keeping it on his right cheek as Charley had done before him.
"We're all right now," he shouted at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the roar of the wind. And then it seemed to the girl they rode on and on for hours without a spoken word. She came to tell by the force of the wind whether they travelled along ridges, or wide low basins, or narrow coulees.
"Our horses will outwind their ponies," shouted Joel, in reply. "Don't let these loose horses turn into the valley." The divide was more difficult to follow than the creek. The meanderings of the latter were crossed and recrossed without halting, while the watershed zigzagged, or was broken and cut by dry washes and coulees, thus retarding the speed of the cavalcade.
Every step, the why and wherefore, must be explained to the President, and at the request of the committee, I went into detail in making plain what the observations of my life had taught me of the instincts and habits of cattle, why in the summer they took to the hills, mesas, and uplands, where the breezes were cooling and protected them from insect life; their ability to foretell a storm in winter and seek shelter in coulees and broken country.