When A Mans A Man | Page 4

welcome to
anything on the Burnt Ranch, Stranger."
"But I--ah--I--have never met Mr. Baldwin," explained the other
lamely.
"Oh, that's all right," returned the cowboy heartily. "You're a-goin' to,
an' that's the same thing." Again he started toward the gate.
"But I--pardon me--you are very kind--but I--I prefer to walk."
Once more Joe halted, a puzzled expression on his tanned and
weather-beaten face. "I suppose you know it's some walk," he
suggested doubtfully, as if the man's ignorance were the only possible
solution of his unheard-of assertion.
"So I understand. But it will be good for me. Really, I prefer to walk."
Without a word the cowboy turned back to his horse, and proceeded
methodically to tie the coiled riata in its place on the saddle. Then,
without a glance toward the stranger who stood watching him in
embarrassed silence, he threw the bridle reins over his horse's head,
gripped the saddle horn and swung to his seat, reining his horse away
from the man beside the road.
The stranger, thus abruptly dismissed, moved hurriedly away.
Half way to the creek the cowboy checked his horse and looked back at
the pedestrian as the latter was making his way under the pines and up
the hill. When the man had disappeared over the crest of the hill, the
cowboy muttered a bewildered something, and, touching his horse with
the spurs, loped away, as if dismissing a problem too complex for his
simple mind.
All that day the stranger followed the dusty, unfenced road. Over his
head the wide, bright sky was without a cloud to break its vast expanse.
On the great, open range of mountain, flat and valley the cattle lay
quietly in the shade of oak or walnut or cedar, or, with slow, listless

movement, sought the watering places to slake their thirst. The wild
things retreated to their secret hiding places in rocky den and leafy
thicket to await the cool of the evening hunting hour. The very air was
motionless, as if the never-tired wind itself drowsed indolently.
And alone in the hushed bigness of that land the man walked with his
thoughts--brooding, perhaps, over whatever it was that had so strangely
placed him there--dreaming, it may be, over that which might have
been, or that which yet might be--viewing with questioning, wondering,
half-fearful eyes the mighty, untamed scenes that met his eye on every
hand. Nor did anyone see him, for at every sound of approaching horse
or vehicle he went aside from the highway to hide in the bushes or
behind convenient rocks. And always when he came from his hiding
place to resume his journey that odd smile of self-mockery was on his
face.
At noon he rested for a little beside the road while he ate a meager
sandwich that he took from the pocket of his coat. Then he pushed on
again, with grim determination, deeper and deeper into the heart and
life of that world which was, to him, so evidently new and strange. The
afternoon was well spent when he made his way--wearily now, with
drooping shoulders and dragging step--up the long slope of the Divide
that marks the eastern boundary of the range about Williamson Valley.
At the summit, where the road turns sharply around a shoulder of the
mountain and begins the steep descent on the other side of the ridge, he
stopped. His tired form straightened. His face lighted with a look of
wondering awe, and an involuntary exclamation came from his lips as
his unaccustomed eyes swept the wide view that lay from his feet
unrolled before him.
Under that sky, so unmatched in its clearness and depth of color, the
land lay in all its variety of valley and forest and mesa and mountain--a
scene unrivaled in the magnificence and grandeur of its beauty. Miles
upon miles in the distance, across those primeval reaches, the faint blue
peaks and domes and ridges of the mountains ranked--an uncounted
sentinel host. The darker masses of the timbered hillsides, with the
varying shades of pine and cedar, the lighter tints of oak brush and

chaparral, the dun tones of the open grass lands, and the brighter note
of the valley meadows' green were defined, blended and harmonized by
the overlying haze with a delicacy exquisite beyond all human power to
picture. And in the nearer distances, chief of that army of mountain
peaks, and master of the many miles that lie within their circle, Granite
Mountain, gray and grim, reared its mighty bulk of cliff and crag as if
in supreme defiance of the changing years or the hand of humankind.
In the heart of that beautiful land upon which, from the summit of the
Divide, the stranger looked with such rapt appreciation, lies
Williamson Valley, a natural meadow