Sundown Slim | Page 5

wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom. Great
distances were but the highways of his heritage, each promising new
vistas, new adventuring. His wayside fires were his altars, their smoke
the incense to his gods. A true adventurer, albeit timid, he journeyed
not knowing why, but rather because he knew no reason for not
journeying. Wrapped in his vague imaginings he swung along, peering
ahead from time to time until at last he saw upon the far background of
the night a darker something shaped like a tiny mound. "That's her!" he
exclaimed, joyously, and quickened his pace. "But Gee Gosh! I guess
them fellas forgot I was afoot. That hill looks turruble far off. Mebby
because it's dark." The distant hill seemed to keep pace ahead of him,
sliding away into the southern night as he advanced. Having that
stubbornness so frequently associated with timidity, he plodded on,
determined to top the hill before morning. "Them fellas as rides don't
know how far things are," he commented. "But, anyhow, the folks at
that hotel will sure know I want the job, walkin' all night for it."
Gradually the outline of the hill became bolder. Sundown estimated
that he had been traveling several hours, when the going stiffened to a
slow grade. Presently the grade became steep and rocky. Thus far the
road had led straight south. Now it swung to the west and skirted the
base of the hill in a gradual ascent. Then it swung back again following
a fairly easy slope to the top. His optimism waned as he saw no light
ahead. The night grew colder. The stars flickered as the wind of the
dawn, whispering over the grasses, touched his face. He paused for a
moment on the crest of the hill, turned to look back, and then started
down the slope. It was steep and rutted. He had not gone far when he
stumbled and fell. His blanket-roll had pitched ahead of him. He
fumbled about for it and finally found it. "Them as believes in signs
would say it was about time to go to roost," he remarked, nursing his
knee that had been cut on a fragment of ragged tufa. A coyote wailed.

Sundown started up. "Some lonesome. But she sure is one grand old
night! Guess I'll turn in."
He rolled in his blankets. Hardly had he adjusted his length of limb to
the unevenness of the ground when he fell asleep. He had come
twenty-five miles across the midnight mesas. Five miles below him
was his destination, shrouded by the night, but visioned in his dreams
as a palatial summer resort, aglow with lights and eagerly awaiting the
coming of the new cook.
The dawn, edging its slow way across the mesas, struck palely on the
hillside where he slept. A rabbit, huddled beneath a scrub-cedar,
hopped to the middle of the road and sat up, staring with moveless eyes
at the motionless hump of blanket near the road. In a flash the wide
mesas were tinged with gold as the smouldering red sun rose, to march
unclouded to the western sea.
Midway between the town of Antelope and the river Concho is the
water-hole. The land immediately surrounding the water-hole is
enclosed with a barb-wire fence. Within the enclosure is a ranch-house
painted white, a scrub-cedar corral, a small stable, and a lean-to
shading the water-hole from the desert sun. The place is altogether neat
and habitable. It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the
ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud bank, it
stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert, incapable,
without irrigation, of producing anything more edible than lizards and
horned toads. Why a homesteader should have chosen to locate there is
a mystery. His reason for abandoning the place is glaringly obvious.
Though failure be written in every angle and nook of the homestead, it
is the failure of large-hearted enterprise, of daring to attempt, of
striving to make the desert bloom, and not the failure of indolence or
sloth.
Western humor like Western topography is apt to be more or less
rugged. Between the high gateposts of the yard enclosure there is a
great, twelve-foot sign lettered in black. It reads: "American Hotel." A
band of happy cowboys appropriated the sign when on a visit to
Antelope, pressed a Mexican freighter to pack it thirty miles across the

desert, and nailed it above the gateway of the water-hole ranch. It is a
standing joke among the cattle- and sheep-men of the Concho Valley.
Sundown sat up and gazed about. The rabbit, startled out of its ordinary
resourcefulness, stiffened. The delicate nostrils ceased twitching.
"Good mornin', little fella! You been travelin' all night too?"