SHOSHONE LAND 



wards discard. So, not quite meaning to, 

 but breathless with daring, they crept up a 

 gully, across a sage brush flat and through 

 a waste of boulders, to the rugged pines 

 where their sharp eyes had made out the 

 buzzards settling. 



The medicine-man told me, always with 

 a quaking relish at this point, that while 

 they, grown bold by success, were still in 

 the tree, they sighted a Paiute hunting 

 party crossing between them and their 

 own land. That was mid-morning, and all 

 day on into the dark the boys crept and 

 crawled and slid, from boulder to bush, 

 and bush to boulder, in cactus scrub and 

 on naked sand, always in a sweat of fear, 

 until the dust caked in the nostrils and 

 the breath sobbed in the body, around 

 and away many a mile until they came to 

 their own land again. And all the time 

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