especially at dusk when the mountains withdraw behind their veils and
mystery flows into the bottomlands, has always a panoramic quality that
throws small any human-sized activities. The ranch houses and their
attendant trees look like toys; the bands of cattle and the men working
them are as though viewed through the reverse lenses of a glass; and the
very details of mesquite or _sacatone_ flats, of alkali shallow or of
oak grove are blended into broad washes of tone. But now the distant,
galloping horse with its swaying mannikin charging on the ranch seemed
to fill our world. The great forces of portent that hover aloof in the
dusk of the desert stooped as with a rush of wings. The peaceful, wide
spaces and the veiled hills and the brooding skies were swept clear.
Crisis filled our souls: crisis laid her hand on every living moving
thing in the world, stopping it in its tracks so that the very
infinities for a brief, weird period seemed poised over the running
horse and the swaying, fumbling man.

At least that is the way it affected me; and subsequent talk leads me to
believe that that it is how it affected every man jack of us. We all had
different ways of expressing it. Windy Bill subsequently remarked: "I
felt like some old Injun He-God had just told me to crawl in my hole and
give them that knew how a chanct."

But I know we all stopped short, frozen in our tracks, and stared, and I
don't believe man, _or_ horse, drew a deep breath.

Nearer and nearer the stallion drew to the ranch. Now he was within a
few yards. In another moment he would crash head on, at tremendous
speed, into the closed massive doors. The rider seemed to have regained
somewhat of his strength. He was sitting straight in the saddle, was no
longer clinging. But apparently he was making no effort to regain