2

Deep in the Wyoming hills lay a valley watered by a stream that ran
down from Cheyenne Pass; a band of Sioux Indians had an encampment
there. Viewed from the summit of a grassy ridge, the scene was
colorful and idle and quiet, in keeping with the lonely, beautiful
valley. Cottonwoods and willows showed a bright green; the course of
the stream was marked in dark where the water ran, and light where
the sand had bleached; brown and black dots scattered over the
valley were in reality grazing horses; lodge-pole tents gleamed
white in the sun, and tiny bits of red stood out against the white;
lazy wreaths of blue smoke rose upward.

The Wyoming hills were split by many such valleys and many such
bare, grassy ridges sloped up toward the mountains. Upon the side of
one ridge, the highest, there stood a solitary mustang, haltered
with a lasso. He was a ragged, shaggy, wild beast, and there was no
saddle or bridle on him, nothing but the halter. He was not grazing,
although the bleached white grass grew long and thick under his
hoofs. He looked up the slope, in a direction indicated by his
pointing ears, and watched a wavering movement of the long grass.

It was wild up on that ridge, bare of everything except grass, and
the strange wavering had a nameless wildness in its motion. No
stealthy animal accounted for that trembling--that forward
undulating quiver. It wavered on to the summit of the ridge.