Produced by David Garcia, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: A number of very obvious | | typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list please see the bottom of | | the document. | +-----------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [Illustration: "UNDER THE HAT BRIM DRAWN FORWARD TO HIS LINE OF VISION HIS EYES ... GAZED FORTH KEEN AND OBSERVANT"] THE IRON FURROW BY GEORGE C. SHEDD FRONTISPIECE BY HENRY A. BOTKIN A.L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. THE IRON FURROW THE IRON FURROW CHAPTER I The Ventisquero Range stretches across the circumference of one's vision in a procession of mountains that come tall and blue out of the distant north and seemingly march past to vanish in the remote south like azure phantoms. The mountains wall the horizon and dominate the mesa, their black forest-clad flanks crumpled and broken and gashed by canons, lifting above timber-line peaks of bare brown rock that pierce the clouds floating along the range. At sunrise they cast immense shadows upon the mesa spreading westward from their base; and at sunset they reflect golden and purple glows upon the plain until the earth appears swimming in some iridescent sea of ether; while over them from dawn till dusk, traversed by a few fleecy clouds, lies the turquoise sky of New Mexico. At a certain point in the range a small canon opens upon the mesa with a gush of gravel and sand that flows a short way into the sagebrush and forms a creek bed. Tucked back in the little canon there is a considerable growth of bushes and trees, cool and fresh-looking in the shadow of the gorge during the summer season, a splash of vivid green there at the bottom of the dusty gray mountain, but at the canon's mouth this verdure ceases.