hid the stars. The man on the Divide lifted his face to the stars that
now in the wide-arched sky were gathering in such unnumbered multitudes
to keep their sentinel watch over the world below.

The cool evening wind came whispering over the lonely land, and all the
furred and winged creatures of the night stole from their dark hiding
places into the gloom which is the beginning of their day. A coyote
crept stealthily past in the dark and from the mountain side below came
the weird, ghostly call of its mate. An owl drifted by on silent wings.
Night birds chirped in the chaparral. A fox barked on the ridge above.
The shadowy form of a bat flitted here and there. From somewhere in the
distance a bull bellowed his deep-voiced challenge.

Suddenly the man on the summit of the Divide sprang to his feet and,
with a gesture that had he not been so alone might have seemed
affectedly dramatic, stretched out his arms in an attitude of wistful
longing while his lips moved as if, again and again, he whispered a
name.




CHAPTER III.

IN THE BIG PASTURE.


In the Williamson Valley country the spring round-up, or "rodeo," as it
is called in Arizona, and the shipping are well over by the last of
June. During the long summer weeks, until the beginning of the fall