92 



SUMMER 



rock plains that, no matter how hot the day, 

 crowds the cattle together for warmth. To-night not 

 a breath stirred the sage as Wade wound in and out 

 among the bushes, the hot dust stinging his eyes and 

 caking rough on his skin. 



Round and round moved the weaving, shifting 

 forms, out of the dark and into the dark, a gray 

 spectral line like a procession of ghosts, or some slow 

 morris of the desert's sheeted dead. But it was not 

 a line, it was a sea of forms ; not a procession, but 

 the even surging of a maelstrom of hoofs a mile 

 around. 



Wade galloped out on the plain for a breath of 

 air and a look at the sky. A quick cold rain would 

 quiet them ; but there was no feel of rain in the dark- 

 ness, no smell of it in the air. Only the powdery 

 taste of bitter sage. 



The desert, where the herd had camped, was one 

 of the highest of a series of tablelands, or benches, 

 that lay as level as a floor, and rimmed by a sheer 

 wall of rock over which it dropped to the bench of 

 sage below. The herd had been headed for a pass, 

 and was now halted within a mile of the rim rock on 

 the east, where there was about three hundred feet' 

 of perpendicular fall. 



It was the last place an experienced plainsman 

 would have chosen for a camp ; and every time Wade 

 circled the herd and came in between the cattle and 

 the rim, he felt its nearness. The darkness helped to 



