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 mc ! 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. 



" I '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 



