New Mexico -- Fiction; Western stories; Women pioneers -- Fiction
An exquisitely beautiful scene surprised and enthralled her gaze. She
saw a level space, green with long grass, bright with flowers, dotted
with groves of graceful firs and pines and spruces, reaching to superb
crags, rosy and golden in the sunlight. Eager to get out where she could
enjoy an unrestricted view, she searched for her pack, found it in a
corner, and then hurriedly and quietly dressed.
Her favorite stag-hounds, Russ and Tartar, were asleep before the
door, where they had been chained. She awakened them and loosened them,
thinking the while that it must have been Stewart who had chained
them near her. Close at hand also was a cowboy’s bed rolled up in a
tarpaulin.
The cool air, fragrant with pine and spruce and some subtle nameless
tang, sweet and tonic, made Madeline stand erect and breathe slowly
and deeply. It was like drinking of a magic draught. She felt it in
her blood, that it quickened its flow. Turning to look in the other
direction, beyond the tent, she saw the remnants of last night’s
temporary camp, and farther on a grove of beautiful pines from which
came the sharp ring of the ax. Wider gaze took in a wonderful park, not
only surrounded by lofty crags, but full of crags of lesser height, many
lifting their heads from dark-green groves of trees. The morning sun,
not yet above the eastern elevations, sent its rosy and golden shafts in
between the towering rocks, to tip the pines.
Madeline, with the hounds beside her, walked through the nearest grove.
The ground was soft and springy and brown with pine-needles. Then
she saw that a clump of trees had prevented her from seeing the most
striking part of this natural park. The cowboys had selected a campsite
where they would have the morning sun and afternoon shade. Several
tents and flies were already up; there was a huge lean-to made of spruce
boughs; cowboys were busy round several camp-fires; piles of packs lay
covered with tarpaulins, and beds were rolled up under the trees. This
space was a kind of rolling meadow, with isolated trees here and there,
and other trees in aisles and circles; and it mounted up in low, grassy
banks to great towers of stone five hundred feet high. Other crags rose
behind these. From under a mossy cliff, huge and green and cool, bubbled
a full, clear spring. Wild flowers fringed its banks. Out in the meadow
the horses were knee-deep in grass that waved in the morning breeze.
Florence espied Madeline under the trees and came running. She was like
a young girl, with life and color and joy. She wore a flannel blouse,
corduroy skirt, and moccasins. And her hair was fastened under a band
like an Indian’s.
“Castleton’s gone with a gun, for hours, it seems,” said Florence.
“Gene just went to hunt him up. The other gentlemen are still asleep. I
imagine they sure will sleep up heah in this air.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account