Deserts -- Fiction; Latter Day Saints -- Fiction; Utah -- Fiction; Western stories
Hare soon yielded to the warmth of the blankets; a drowsiness that he
endeavored in vain to throw off smothered his thoughts; sleep glued his
eyelids tight. They opened again some hours later. For a moment he could
not realize where he was; then the whip of the cold wind across his
face, the woolly feel and smell of the blankets, and finally the steady
trot of horses and the clink of a chain swinging somewhere under him,
recalled the actuality of the night ride. He wondered how many miles had
been covered, how the drivers knew the direction and kept the horses in
the trail, and whether the outlaws were in pursuit. When Naab stopped
the team and, climbing down, walked back some rods to listen, Hare felt
sure that Dene was coming. He listened, too, but the movements of the
horses and the rattle of their harness were all the sounds he could
hear. Naab returned to his seat; the team started, now no longer in a
trot; they were climbing. After that Hare fell into a slumber in which
he could hear the slow grating whirr of wheels, and when it ceased he
awoke to raise himself and turn his ear to the back trail. By-and-by he
discovered that the black night had changed to gray; dawn was not far
distant; he dozed and awakened to clear light. A rose-red horizon lay
far below and to the eastward; the intervening descent was like a
rolling sea with league-long swells.
“Glad you slept some,” was Naab's greeting. “No sign of Dene yet. If we
can get over the divide we're safe. That's Coconina there, Fire Mountain
in Navajo meaning. It's a plateau low and narrow at this end, but it
runs far to the east and rises nine thousand feet. It forms a hundred
miles of the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We're across the Arizona
line now.”
Hare followed the sweep of the ridge that rose to the eastward, but to
his inexperienced eyes its appearance carried no sense of its noble
proportions.
“Don't form any ideas of distance and size yet a while,” said Naab,
reading Hare's expression. “They'd only have to be made over as soon as
you learn what light and air are in this country. It looks only half a
mile to the top of the divide; well, if we make it by midday we're
lucky. There, see a black spot over this way, far under the red wall?
Look sharp. Good! That's Holderness's ranch. It's thirty miles from
here. Nine Mile Valley heads in there. Once it belonged to Martin Cole.
Holderness stole it. And he's begun to range over the divide.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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