XIII

THE MISSING CHORD

I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy
Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time
when I called "Hallo!" at his hitching-rack; but from that moment
until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas
code, undeniable friends.

After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room
house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista
grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the
hardpacked loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the
structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably
concerning the affairs of the rest of the world.

As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that
prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who
will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring.
An inventory must suffice.

The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient
prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear,
lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed
as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The
miraculous air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues
of wild flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was
a great, round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but