from his
field calmly watched this departure; for horses must recognize even less
than men the black corners that their destinies turn. The pony stopped
feeding to look at the mail-wagon pass by; but the master sitting in the
wagon forebore to turn his head.

XXVI. BALAAM AND PEDRO

Resigned to wait for the Judge's horses, Balaam went into his office
this dry, bright morning and read nine accumulated newspapers; for
he was behindhand. Then he rode out on the ditches, and met his man
returning with the troublesome animals at last. He hastened home and
sent for the Virginian. He had made a decision.

"See here," he said; "those horses are coming. What trail would you take
over to the Judge's?"

"Shortest trail's right through the Bow Laig Mountains," said the
foreman, in his gentle voice.

"Guess you're right. It's dinner-time. We'll start right afterward.
We'll make Little Muddy Crossing by sundown, and Sunk Creek to-morrow,
and the next day'll see us through. Can a wagon get through Sunk Creek
Canyon?"

The Virginian smiled. "I reckon it can't, seh, and stay resembling a
wagon."

Balaam told them to saddle Pedro and one packhorse, and drive the bunch
of horses into a corral, roping the Judge's two, who proved extremely
wild. He had decided to take this journey himself on remembering certain
politics soon to be rife in Cheyenne. For Judge Henry was indeed a
greater man than Balaam. This personally conducted return of the horses
would temper its tardiness, and, moreover, the sight of some New York
visitors would be a good thing after seven months of no warmer touch
with that metropolis than the Sunday HERALD, always eight days old when
it reached the Butte Creek Ranch.

They forded Butte Creek, and, crossing the well-travelled trail which
follows down to Drybone, turned their faces toward the uninhabited
country that began immediately, as the ocean begins off a sandy shore.
And as a single mast on which no sail is shining stands at the horizon
and seems to add a loneliness to the surrounding sea, so the long gray
line of fence, almost a mile away, that ended Balaam's land on this side
the creek, stretched along the waste ground and added desolation to
the plain. No solitary watercourse with margin of cottonwoods or willow
thickets flowed here to stripe the dingy, yellow world with interrupting
green, nor were cattle to be seen dotting the distance, nor moving
objects at all, nor any bird in the soundles