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His head shot up with the old, wild, spirited sweep. Gale leveled his glass at the patch of mesquites. He saw the raiders running to an open place, pointing, gesticulating. The glass brought them so close that he saw the dark faces. Suddenly they broke and fled back among the trees. Then he got only white and dark gleams of moving bodies.
On the first morning that Hardy took his axe and went down to the river he found a single bunch of gaunted cattle standing in the shade of the big mesquites that grew against Lookout Point a runty cow with her two-year-old and yearling, and a wobbly calf with a cactus joint stuck across his nose.
He passed by old camp-sites that he well remembered. These, however, did not strike his fancy this time, and the significance of the change in him did not occur at the moment. At last he found a secluded spot, under cover of thick mesquites and oaks, at a goodly distance from the old trail. He took saddle and pack off the horse.
Majesty Hammond, adios!" Stewart leaped for the saddle of his horse, and with the flying mount crashed through the mesquites to disappear. XXII. The Secret Told In the shaded seclusion of her room, buried face down deep among the soft cushions on her couch, Madeline Hammond lay prostrate and quivering under the outrage she had suffered.
They'll all have to go. Think of the years of love an' happiness in store for you. A week or so an' it 'll be too late. Can you stand for me seein' you?... Let me tell you, Mercedes, when the summer heat hits the lava we'll all wither an' curl up like shavin's near a fire. A wind of hell will blow up this slope. Look at them mesquites. See the twist in them. That's the torture of heat an' thirst.
"He will turn to look to wave good-by?" asked Nell. "Dear he is an Indian," replied Gale. From that height they watched him ride through the mesquites, up over the river bank to enter the cactus. His mount showed dark against the green and white, and for a long time he was plainly in sight. The sun hung red in a golden sky.
Then the raider wheeled his plunging horse back to the level, and went racing wildly down the valley. The compact bunch of bays and blacks seemed to break apart and spread rapidly from the edge of the mesquites. Puffs of white smoke indicated firing, and showed the nature of the raiders' excitement. They were far out of ordinary range, but they spurred toward Ladd, shooting as they rode.
Whereupon I spread my blanket in as sheltered a place as I could find and lay down. The coyotes were on noisy duty, the wind moaned and rushed through the mesquites. But despite these sounds and worry about Steele, and the never-absent haunting thought of Sally, I went to sleep.
The mesquites suddenly became alive with brown-skinned warriors, hideous with paint and screaming their hoarse death cry. Some were mounted, and others were on foot. All charged the coach. There must have been fifty in the swarm, and still they came! Those that were armed with rifles fired madly into the coach and at the team. Others rushed up and tried to seize the bridles.
From his camp the herder goes forth at daybreak with his flock of fourteen hundred ewes and lambs or two thousand wethers, grazing slowly toward the creek or neighboring water-hole where at noon he lies up in the shade; and to it he slowly returns in the cool of the afternoon, the flock moving in loose order among the mesquites, taking a nip here, a nip there, but ever hanging together and dependent, the most gregarious of animals.
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