moments of
a gashed finger, only gazes at the wound in round-eyed wonder. Cassidy
had begun to remember.

He remembered that "back home" a man didn't have to live _all_ the
time on sour bread and canned tomatoes; "back home" you didn't have to
die of thirst, coming in with day-empty water-barrels to find the
spring dried up; "back home" the mountains didn't jiggle up and down
in front of you, through glassy waves of heat that rightfully
belonged in a blast-furnace. Things were different--and better--"back
home."

Cassidy lifted his head and listened. He had heard the sound of water.
Half hidden in the brush, a little brook was running by him down a
dark ravine. Joyously, tumultuously, it churked and gurgled over the
smooth green stones and moss down to the level, and then slipped away,
with low, contented murmurings, among the cottonwoods and willows.
Cassidy found himself following that brook. It took him down through
fields of dark lucerne. It led him through yellow pasturage, deep with
stubble and wild oats. It showed him long-aisled orchards glinting
with fruit in the sunlight. It ushered him into a wide and pleasant
valley. In the distance Cassidy saw a ranch. Near by, with blowsy
forelock and careless mane, a shaggy pony stood knee-deep in the
river-sedge.

"Why, hello, hossy!" whispered Cassidy, with soft surprise. "Why, say!
I know yuh!"

A full, warm wind began to sough through the pines on the hillside. He
could hear it blowing, blowing unendingly, from across the hills. His
ears rang with the whirring sound, as it came singing along with the
vox humana chords of a great 'cello, streaming down from the heights,
gentle-fingered, but wondrously vast-bodied--booming along with half a
world behind it. Fair in the face it smote him with its resinous
breath, and he felt his lips parting to inhale its fiery tonic--felt,
as he used to feel, the magic glow tingling in his veins again and
brightening his eyes with the pure pagan glory of his living.

And then, very sadly indeed for Cassidy, and in much the same way that
whisky and he had let it all slip through their fingers long ago, the
sound of the brook stilled. The valley, the meadows, the ranch, and
the kind, warm wind faded, one by one. In their stead came the creak
and shock of a belated wagon-train pulling into camp. He heard the
panting of laboring horses. He caught the salt reek of sweaty harness.
He heard the drivers curse querulously as they jammed