There, at the long troughs filled by the windmill of the
blindfolded pump mule, they drank, then filed away again into the
mists of the desert. And Senor Buck Johnson, or his foreman,
Parker, examined them for their condition, noting the increase,
remarking the strays from another range. Later, perhaps, they,
too, rode abroad. The same thing happened at nine other ranches
from five to ten miles apart, where dwelt other fierce, silent
men all under the authority of Buck Johnson.
And when night fell, and the topaz and violet and saffron and
amethyst and mauve and lilac had faded suddenly from the
Chiricahuas, like a veil that has been rent, and the ramparts had
become slate-grey and then black--the soft-breathed night
wandered here and there over the desert, and the land fell under
an enchantment even stranger than the day's.
So the days went by, wonderful, fashioning the ways and the
characters of men. Seven passed. Buck Johnson and his foreman
began to look for the stranger. Eight, they began to speculate.
Nine, they doubted. On the tenth they gave him up--and he came.
They knew him first by the soft lowing of cattle. Jed Parker,
dazzled by the lamp, peered out from the door, and made him out
dimly turning the animals into the corral.
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