matter of horse-dealing Bostil's Ford was as bold as the thieves.

Old Brackton, a man of varied Western experience, kept the one store, which
was tavern, trading-post, freighter's headquarters, blacksmith's shop, and any
thing else needful. Brackton employed riders, teamsters, sometimes Indians, to
freight supplies in once a month from Durango. And that was over two hundred
miles away. Sometimes the supplies did not arrive on time--occasionally not at
all. News from the outside world, except that elicited from the taciturn
travelers marching into Utah, drifted in at intervals. But it was not missed.
These wilderness spirits were the forerunners of a great, movement, and as
such were big, strong, stern, sufficient unto themselves. Life there was made
possible by horses. The distant future, that looked bright to far-seeing men,
must be and could only be fulfilled through the endurance and faithfulness of
horses. And then, from these men, horses received the meed due them, and the
love they were truly worth. The Navajo was a nomad horseman, an Arab of the
Painted Desert, and the Ute Indian was close to him. It was they who developed
the white riders of the uplands as well as the wild-horse wrangler or hunter.

Brackton's ramshackle establishment stood down at the end of the village
street. There was not a sawed board in all that structure, and some of the
pine logs showed how they had been dropped from the bluff. Brackton, a little
old gray man, with scant beard, and eyes like those of a bird, came briskly
out to meet an incoming freighter. The wagon was minus a hind wheel, but the
teamster had come in on three wheels and a pole. The sweaty, dust-caked,
weary, thin-ribbed mustangs, and the gray-and-red-stained wagon, and the huge
jumble of dusty packs, showed something of what the journey had been.

"Hi thar, Red Wilson, you air some late gettin' in," greeted old Brackton.

Red Wilson had red eyes from fighting the flying sand, and red dust pasted in