"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with
the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire
can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I
suppose God foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated,
"an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an'
there--the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He
wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies,
an' them big black buttes to the south are the Judith, an' you can
see--way beyond the Judith--if you look close--the Big Snowy Mountains.
They're more than a hundred miles away."
The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze,
made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched
and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair
of glasses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.
"What is it?" asked the girl.
"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south
slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either.
Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down
and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time
to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side.
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