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"It'll take a week to cut and drag the cedars, let alone to tire out that wild stallion. When the finish comes you want to be on that ledge where we'll have the corral." They returned to camp and prepared supper. Mescal and Piute soon arrived, and, later, Dave and Billy on jaded mustangs.
The white, well-bunched flock had spread, and streams of jumping sheep fled frantically from an enormous silver-backed bear. As the bear struck right and left, a brute-engine of destruction, Jack sent a bullet into him at long range. Stung, the grizzly whirled, bit at his side, and then reared with a roar of fury. But he did not see Jack. He dropped down and launched his huge bulk for Mescal.
"Eschtah has lived there for many years. It's the only permanent Navajo camp I know. These Indians are nomads. Most of them live wherever the sheep lead them. This plateau ranges for a hundred miles, farther than any white man knows, and everywhere, in the valleys and green nooks, will be found Navajo hogans. That's why we may never find Mescal."
"I gave him my promise because there was nothing else to do. I was pledged to to him in the church at White Sage. It can't be changed. I've got to marry Father Naab's eldest son." "Eldest son?" echoed Jack, suddenly mindful of the implication. "Why! that's Snap Naab. Ah! I begin to see light. That Mescal " "I hate him." "You hate him and you're pledged to marry him!... God!
The horizon, ever-widening, lay before him, and the treeless plains, the sun-scorched slopes, the sandy stretches, the massed blocks of black mesas, all seemed to welcome him; his soul sang within him. For Mescal was there.
He said I should have had a twelve-inch saddle instead of a fourteen and if I wasn't so dead set on a McClellan instead of a Western Stock I would be more comfortable. He draped a mackinaw around me and left me to my fate. I wasn't scared by the storm, but Mescal was positively unnerved. He trembled and cringed at every crash.
"Mescal, that's a well-behaved mustang of yours," said August; "not only did she break loose, but she whistled an alarm to Silvermane and his band. Well, roll in now, everybody, and sleep." At breakfast the following day the Naabs fell into a discussion upon the possibility of there being other means of exit from the plateau than the two trails already closed.
God of my soul! it is said that he knows more than his Excellency himself, that his mind works faster. Ay! but there was a time when he was wild, when the mescal burnt his throat like hornets and the aguardiente was like scorpions in his brain; but that was long ago, before he was twenty; now he is thirty-four.
The German set off in the blazing noonday at his swiftest pace. He was obliged to be back at the hotel by three, for the dinner must be paid for whether eaten or not. I fell behind, glad of the opportunity. Many groups of peons were returning now, without their loads, but maudlin and nasty tempered with the mescal for which they had exchanged them. My automatic was within easy reach.
The great desert river was down there, of course, but he knew nothing of it. Would that turn back Wildfire? Slone thought grimly how he had always claimed Nagger to be part fish and part bird. Wildfire was not going to escape. By and by only isolated mescal plants with long, yellow-plumed spears broke the bare monotony of the plateau.
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