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The oak swales, the maple thickets, the aspen groves, the pine-shaded aisles, and the miles of silver spruce all sped by her, as if she had ridden the wind; and through the forest ahead shone the vast open of the Basin, gloomed by purple and silver cloud, shadowed by gray storm, and in the west brightened by golden sky.
"Wouldn't you lie," said she, "for me?" It was, I suppose, only a little womanly probe into character; but it thrilled me in a way the poor girl could not have supposed possible. "I would do anything for you," said I boldly; "but I'd a lot rather fight than lie." The cloud-burst had flooded the swales, and across the hollows ran broad sheets of racing water.
It had done this before when it had gone down into the trough between two of the great, rolling swales of the prairie, but always it had come into sight again in a few minutes. This time, however, it did not, and Dick wondered why. In a few minutes he understood why, for he found himself at the edge of a coulee which had been washed deep by the storms of many winters.
From here the road ran diagonally across the prairie, a velvet-black band on the dim sod. The ground was firmer but there were swales full of water. Through these Kittie dashed with unhesitating confidence, the water flying from her drumming hooves. Once she went to her knees and almost unseated me, but I regained my saddle and shouted, "Go on, Kit."
Flint's calmness gave me courage; and after that, notwithstanding the dreadful scenes I witnessed, I did not feel any fear. As soon as I was at liberty, I set to work with Flint to make myself useful; and though I was close to Captain Swales while we were working the pump, he did not observe me. An event of the sort I am describing shows people in their true colours.
Over beyond the next ridge there were some bushy swales which he remembered as good pasturage where, indeed, he had a mind to "yard up" for the winter, when the snow should get too deep for wide ranging. Once more quickening his pace, he circled back almost to the fringe of the forest, making toward a little stretch of frozen marsh, which was one of his frequented runways between ridge and ridge.
On every hand the long swales rolled away, sunbaked, rocky, innocent of any sign of life other than the trooping telegraph poles in the south, destitute of any sort of vegetation other than the inevitable ak and gos. Wherever the eye wandered the prospect was the same limitless expanses of raw blistering ochres, salmon-pinks, and dry faded reds, under a sky of brass and fire.
Growing weary he slackened his pace. He came down to a walk. As the lonely red of the winter sunset began to stream through the openings of the forest, flushing the snows of the tiny glades and swales, he grew hungry, and began to swallow unsatisfying mouthfuls of the long moss which roughened the tree-trunks.
We found it necessary to skirt these thickets, and at that, sometimes had to cut our way through with our little axes. Hunting was scarcely possible under such conditions. Still we did not see any deer tracks. Eventually we crossed this ridge, or at least the jungle part of it, and got lower down into hollows and swales full of aspens. Copple recognized country he had hunted before.
East Oregon, the Owyhee and the Malheur country, the old trails of General Crook, the willows by the streams, the open swales, the high woods where once Buffalo Horn and Chief E-egante and O-its the medicine-man prospered, through this domain of war and memories went Bolles the school-master with Dean Drake and Brock.
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