The Iron Furrow

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The Iron Furrow

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Title: The Iron Furrow
Author: George C. Shedd
Illustrator: Henry A. Botkin
Release Date: November 18, 2005 [EBook #17088]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FURROW ***

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+-----------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: A
number of very obvious | | typographical errors have been corrected in
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[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
cañons, 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon's mouth
this verdure ceases.
Only an insignificant stream of water ran, one day, in the stony creek
bed that meandered out upon the mesa, and it appeared under the hot
July sun and among the hot stones for all the world like a rivulet of
liquid glass. That was all the mesa had to show, only its endless gray
sagebrush and the creek bed almost dry--unless one should reckon the
three parched cottonwood trees beside the stream, a little way down
from the cañon, and the flat-roofed adobe house near by, and the empty
corral behind built of aspen poles. In that immensity of mountain and
mesa the house looked like a brick of sun-baked mud, the corral like a
child's device of straws, the three cottonwoods like three twigs stuck in
the earth. Or, at any rate, that is how they appeared to a horseman
regarding them from the main mesa trail a mile away.

The rider, a slender tanned young fellow of about twenty-eight, sat in
the saddle with the relaxed ease of habit which allowed his body to
accommodate itself to the steady jogging trot of his horse. A roll
comprising clothes wrapped in a black rubber coat was tied behind the
cantle. His Stetson hat was tilted up at the rear and down in front
almost on his nose--a thin, bony nose, slightly curved and with the
suggestion of a hook in the tip, just the sort of nose to accord with his
lean, sunburnt cheeks and clean-cut chin and straight-lipped mouth.
Under the hat brim drawn forward to his line of vision his eyes,
notwithstanding his air of lounging indolence, gazed forth keen and
observant. He had the appearance of a man who might be seeking a few
stray cattle, or riding to town for mail, and in no particular hurry about
it, either, this hot afternoon; but, for all that, Lee Bryant was
proceeding on important business--important for him, anyhow. When
everything one