The Boss of the Lazy Y | Page 2

and the pony clattered down
the rocky slope, plunged its head deeply into the stream and drank with
eager, silent draughts, Calumet swung himself crossways in the saddle,
fumbled for a moment at his slicker, and drew out a battered tin cup.
Leaning over, he filled the cup with water, tilted his head back and
drank. The blur in the white sky caught his gaze and held it. His eyes
mocked, his lips snarled.
"You damned greaser sneak!" he said. "Followed me fifty miles!" A
flash of race hatred glinted his eyes. "I wouldn't let no damned greaser
eagle get me, anyway!"
The pony had drunk its fill. Calumet returned the tin cup to the slicker
and swung back into the saddle. Refreshed, the pony took the opposite
slope with a rush, emerging from the river upon a high plateau studded
with fir balsam and pine. Bringing the pony to a halt, Calumet turned in
the saddle and looked somberly behind him.
For two days he had been fighting the desert, and now it lay in his rear,
a mystic, dun-colored land of hot sandy waste and silence; brooding,
menacing, holding out its threat of death--a vast natural basin breathing
and pulsing with mystery, rimmed by remote mountains that seemed
tenuous and thin behind the ever-changing misty films that spread from
horizon to horizon.
The expression of Calumet's face was as hard and inscrutable as the
desert itself; the latter's filmy haze did not more surely shut out the
mysteries behind it than did Calumet's expression veil the emotions of
his heart. He turned from the desert to face the plateau, from whose
edge dropped a wide, tawny valley, luxuriant with bunch grass--a
golden brown sweep that nestled between some hills, inviting, alluring.
So sharp was the contrast between the desert and the valley, and so

potent was its appeal to him, that the hard calm of his face threatened to
soften. It was as though he had ridden out of a desolate, ages-old world
where death mocked at life, into a new one in which life reigned
supreme.
There was no change in Calumet's expression, however, though below
him, spreading and dipping away into the interminable distance,
slumbering in the glare of the afternoon sun, lay the land of his youth.
He remembered it well and he sat for a long time looking at it,
searching out familiar spots, reviving incidents with which those spots
had been connected. During the days of his exile he had forgotten, but
now it all came back to him; his brain was illumined and memories
moved in it in orderly array--like a vast army passing in review. And he
sat there on his pony, singling out the more important personages of the
army--the officers, the guiding spirits of the invisible columns.
Five miles into the distance, at a point where the river doubled sharply,
rose the roofs of several ranch buildings--his father's ranch, the Lazy Y.
Upon the buildings Calumet's army of memories descended and he
forgot the desert, the long ride, the bleak days of his exile, as he yielded
to solemn introspection.
Yet, even now, the expression of his face did not change. A little longer
he scanned the valley and then the army of memories marched out of
his vision and he took up the reins and sent the pony forward. The little
animal tossed its head impatiently, perhaps scenting food and
companionship, but Calumet's heavy hand on the reins discouraged
haste.
For Calumet was in no hurry. He had not yet worked out an explanation
for the strange whim that had sent him home after an absence of
thirteen years and he wanted time to study over it. His lips took on a
satiric curl as he meditated, riding slowly down into the valley. It was
inexplicable, mysterious, this notion of his to return to a father who had
never taken any interest in him. He could not account for it. He had not
been sent for, he had not sent word; he did not know why he had come.
He had been in the Durango country when the mood had struck him,
and without waiting to debate the wisdom of the move he had ridden in

to headquarters, secured his time, and--well, here he was. He had
pondered much in an effort to account for the whim, carefully
considering all its phases, and he was still uncertain.
He knew he would receive no welcome; he knew he was not wanted.
Had he felt a longing to revisit the old place? Perhaps it had been that.
And yet, perhaps not, for he was here now, looking at it, living over the
life of his youth, riding again through the long bunch grass, over the
barren alkali flats, roaming again in the