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There is hardly time for salutations. A gray-headed, keen-eyed, florid-faced old soldier is the colonel, and he is snapping with electricity, apparently. "This way, Hull. Come right here, and I'll show you what you are to do." And, followed by Rayner, Hull, and Hayne, the chief rides sharply over to the extreme left of the position and points to the frowning ridge across the intervening swale.
Particularly at Gettysburg its services had been great and its sacrifice costly. He spoke feelingly of the young officers who had been slain and also of humbler men. Since that time I have stood by the simple stone at the "bloody swale at the foot of Culp's Hill," which marked the position held that day by the 2d Massachusetts.
The great rapidity with which the Swale, or such streams as the Arkle, can produce a devastating flood can scarcely be comprehended by those who have not seen the results of even moderate rainstorms on the fells. When, however, some really wet days have been experienced in the upper parts of the dales, it seems a wonder that the bridges are not more often in jeopardy.
Inside, a pandemonium of growling, spatting, snarling, and grunting broke loose. The swale bent flat before heavy gusts of wind, and the big black chicken swept lower and lower above the swamp. Patches of clouds gathered, shutting out the sun and making it very dark, and the next moment were swept away. The sun poured with fierce, burning brightness, and everything was quiet.
But they followed the dog for a quarter of a mile, turning, doubling, crossing two low hills, kicking through a swale of weeds, crawling between the strands of a barbed-wire fence. The walking was hard on her pavement-trained feet. The earth was lumpy, the stubble prickly and lined with grass, thistles, abortive stumps of clover. She dragged and floundered. She heard Kennicott gasp, "Look!"
Let it swing all the way round." "Oh, dear, how you must hate me!" "Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to obliterate such a false impression. "Anything but that!" "Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale, emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls. In the distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows.
They turned and dropped the matter. "Some damn fool with a stolen car." Under the great bowl of sky, in the midst of the plain, the three cars held their level way three little racing dots in the big, clear place. They kept an even course, swaying to the race on level wings that swept the ground and rose to the low swale and passed beyond.
The sun shone in at the windows, the air was balmy and sweet, and lifting herself on her elbow, she saw in a little round swale in the garden outside a faint showing of green nestled into the damp brown earth. She got up, rang for a maid, who came, smiling, white-capped, rosy-cheeked. She had coffee and rolls with rich country cream while she dressed.
Leaping on their snorting ponies the cowboys rode back, leaving behind them two fires where before there had been but one. But soon the two would merge into one, leaving a broad, blackened barren strip, that contained no fuel for the flames. "It's lucky we struck that swale where the wind blew in the other direction," Dave remarked. "Mighty lucky," assented Pocus Pete.
"The creatur' has plunged over the hillock," said Abner, who had proceeded a short distance beyond the rest of the party. "Ah! there you will find it, in yon swale of alders. Look! a thousand carrion birds, ar' hovering above the carcass." "The animal has still life in him," returned the squatter, "or the buzzards would settle upon their prey!
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