United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I wish I had brought Zeke and George. It'll be a hard drive, though we've got Jack and Mescal to help." Hot as it was August Naab lost no time in the start. Piute led the train on foot, and the flock, used to following him, got under way readily. Dave and Mescal rode along the sides, and August with Jack came behind, with the pack-burros bringing up the rear.
Hare met the proffered hand with his own, and as he had recoiled from Snap Naab so now he received another shock, different indeed but impelling in its power, instinctive of some great portent. Hare was impressed by an indefinable subtlety, a nameless distrust, as colorless as the clear penetrating amber lightness of the eyes that bent upon him.
Holderness suddenly showed he was ill at ease; he appeared to be expecting arrivals from the direction of Seeping Springs. Snap Naab leaned against the side of the door, his narrow gaze cunningly studying the rustlers before him. More than any other he had caught a foreshadowing. Like the desert-hawk he could see afar.
If ever a human being had the eyes of a hawk Snap Naab had them. The little brown flecks danced in clear pale yellow. Evidently Snap had not located the perplexing dust-clouds, for his glance drifted. Suddenly the remarkable vibration of his pupils ceased, and his glance grew fixed, steely, certain. "That's a bunch of wild mustangs," he said.
In the gloom of early dawn, before the pink appeared in the east, and all was whitening gray, the Mokis emerged from their little mud and stone huts and sat upon the roofs with blanketed and drooping heads. One day August Naab showed in few words how significant a factor the sun was in the lives of desert men. "We've got to turn back," he said to Hare.
"He manages them easily now," said Naab, "but when the lambs come they can't be kept in. The coyotes and wolves hang out in the thickets and pick up the stragglers. The worst enemy of sheep, though, is the old grizzly bear. Usually he is grouchy, and dangerous to hunt. He comes into the herd, kills the mother sheep, and eats the milk-bag no more! He will kill forty sheep in a night.
The cottonwoods showered silken floss till the cabins and grass were white; the birds returned to the oasis; the sun kissed warm color into the cherries, and the distant noise of the river seemed like the humming of a swarm of bees. "Here, Jack," said August Naab, one morning, "get a spade and come with me. There's a break somewhere in the ditch."
Our ascent was rapid, and after about an hour we turned due east, this part being very bare-looking, though there were a good many horrid acacias and also euphorbias with rounded trunks. We soon burst upon a lovely plain all mapped out in fields and abrs. It is six miles to Naab, and we took three hours.
Dene's eyes glittered as he pulled off his gauntlets and beat the sand out of them; and but for that quick fierce glance his leisurely friendly manner would have disarmed suspicion. "Are you the Mormon Naab?" he queried. "August Naab, I am." "Dry camp, eh? Hosses tired, I reckon. Shore it's a sandy trail. Where's the rest of you fellers?"
He had often heard the scream of lion and cry of wildcat, but this was the strange sound of which August Naab had told him, the mysterious call of canyon and desert night. Daylight showed Echo Cliffs to be of vastly greater range than the sister plateau across the river.
Word Of The Day