THE IDYL OF RED GULCH


Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much
the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long
he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long
he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered.
A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and
saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular,
was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to
attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a
temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, "Effects
of McCorkle's whisky--kills at forty rods," with a hand pointing to
McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire,
personal; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process
rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this
facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule,
released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and
sniffed curiously at the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep
sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty
boots, and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one
eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious
and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around until
they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with
gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted