athering quick courage the while, he himself at length
reared, struck out with fore legs, followed up with hind legs, and found
himself directly over the tuft of grass. This was pleasant, and he
promptly began to nibble it, finding it no less toothsome--perhaps more
toothsome--for the effort. And when he had finished this he gazed about
for others, and, seeing others, moved upon each in turn as he had moved
upon the first, rearing and striking, following it with hind legs,
rearing and striking again, following again with hind legs, all
successfully. And so he learned his second great lesson in the open.

Thus he began his life in the desert. Fraught as it was with much
discomfort, both spiritual and physical, he yet found much of interest
in it all, and he was destined to find in it, as time went on, much more
of even greater interest. And in the days which followed, and the weeks
and months following these, because he showed that he was willing and
anxious to learn, to attune himself to the life, he aroused in all who
came in contact with him, men as well as horses, an esteem and affection
which made life smoother and more pleasant for him than it might
otherwise have been.

CHAPTER XIV

A PICTURE

A hundred miles west from the shack, stretching away from it in an
almost unbroken expanse, was a desert within the desert. _Amole_
and sagebrush and cactus vied with each other to relieve the dead, flat,
monotonous brown. Without movement anywhere, save for the heat-waves
ascending, this expanse presented an unutterably drear and lonesome
aspect. It terminated, or partly terminated--swerving off into the south
beyond--in a long sand-dune running northeast and southwest. This mighty
roll lay brooding, as did the world-old expanse fringing it, in the
silence of late morning. Overhead a turquoise sky, low, spotless,
likewise brooding, dipped down gracefully to the horizon around--a
horizon like an immense girdle, a girdle which, as one journeyed along,
seemed to accompany him, rapidly if he moved rapidly, slowly if he moved
slowly--an immense circle of which he was the center. The sun was
glaring, and revealed here and there out of the drifts a bleached
skeleton, mutely proclaiming the sun as overlord, while over all, around
and about and within this throbbing furnace, there seemed to lurk a
voice, a voice of but a softly lisped word--solitude.

Suddenly, like a mere dot against the skyline, there appeared over th