the chilling salutes and adieux of coming and departing winter.

[FOOTNOTE 60: norther--a Texas "blue norther" is a cold front.
Its arrival is heralded by a blue-black sky to the
north, followed by rain and thunderstorms. The
temperature can fall 20-40 degrees in a few hours.]

Curly followed his nose down the first tortuous street into which his
irresponsible feet conducted him. At the lower end of it, on the bank
of the serpentine stream, he perceived an open gate in a cemented rock
wall. Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built
against three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure.
Under the sheds many horses were champing at their oats and corn.
Many wagons and buckboards stood about with their teams' harness
thrown carelessly upon the shafts and doubletrees. Curly recognised
the place as a wagon-yard, such as is provided by merchants for their
out-of-town friends and customers. No one was in sight. No doubt the
drivers of those wagons were scattered about the town "seeing the
elephant and hearing the owl." In their haste to become patrons of the
town's dispensaries of mirth and good cheer the last ones to depart
must have left the great wooden gate swinging open.

Curly had satisfied the hunger of an anaconda and the thirst of
a camel, so he was neither in the mood nor the condition of an
explorer. He zigzagged his way to the first wagon that his eyesight
distinguished in the semi-darkness under the shed. It was a two-horse
wagon with a top of white canvas. The wagon was half filled with loose
piles of wool sacks, two or three great bundles of grey blankets, and
a number of bales, bundles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have
estimated the load at once as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for