tales of adventure, drifts of tobacco smoke in gaming halls, the chant of
the croupier behind the wheel, deep voices of men, laughter of pretty
girls, tatoo of running horses, shouts which only redeye can inspire. He
sniffed the air; odor of burned bacon and coffee permeated the cabin. He
turned to the right and saw his discarded overalls with ragged holes at the
knees; he turned to the left and looked into the face of the rusted alarm
clock. Its quick, soft ticking sent an ache of weariness through him.

"What's wrong with me," muttered Gregg. Even that voice seemed ghostly loud
in the cabin, and he shivered again. "I must be going nutty."

As if to escape from his own thoughts, he stepped out into the sun again,
and it was so grateful to him after the chill shadow in the lean-to, that
he looked up, smiling, into the sky. A west wind urged a scattered herd of
clouds over the peaks, tumbled masses of white which puffed into
transparent silver at the edges, and behind, long wraiths of vapor marked
the path down which they had traveled. Such an old cowhand as Vic Gregg
could not fail to see the forms of cows and heavy-necked bulls and running
calves in that drift of clouds. About this season the boys would be
watching the range for signs of screw worms in the cattle, and the
bog-riders must have their hands full dragging out cows which had fled into
the mud to escape the heel flies. With a new lonesomeness he drew his eyes
down to the mountains.

Ordinarily, strange fancies never entered the hard head of Gregg, but today
it seemed to him that the mountains found a solemn companionship in each
other.

Out of the horizon, where the snowy forms glimmered in the blue, they
marched in loose order down to the valley of the Asper, where some of them