60 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



ened till it touched the sage with a loneliness 

 that was profound. 



One of us would have to get off in the sage 

 and give the dying man a place, and I, for every 

 reason, was the one to do it. Must I confess that 

 something like fear of that far-circling horizon, 

 of the deep silence, of the pall of gray sage and 

 shadow took hold upon me ! Dying ? A man 

 yonder alone ? 



Just then the second car, which we had passed 

 some distance back, came up, and a long, lean 

 man in a linen duster, who had eaten with me at 

 the road-house, hearing the story, hurried with us 

 over to the shack. 



" 1 5 m a doctor," he said, leaving me unstrap- 

 ping some luggage on the car, as he entered the 

 door. He was out again in a minute. 



" On the wrong side. Bad strain in the groin, 

 that 's all. He '11 soon be in the saddle," and 

 we were racing on toward Burns, the purring of 

 the engine now a song of distances, of wide 

 slumbering plains of sage and sand, and, over- 

 head, of waking stars. 



The long desert dusk still lingered, but lights 

 were twinkling as we slowed through the last 



