ck
stallion of Bronco Mesa, chasing him by circuitous ways to the river
where he and his band could drink. But though more than one fine mare
and suckling, heavy with water, fell victim, the black stallion,
having thought and intelligence like a man, plunged through the water,
leaving his thirst unquenched, refusing with a continency and
steadfastness rare even among men to sell his liberty at any price. In
the round corral at Hidden Water there was roping and riding as Creede
and Hardy gentled their prizes; in the cool evenings they rode forth
along the Alamo, counting the cows as they came down to water or
doctoring any that were sick; and at night they lay on their cots
beneath the _ramada_ telling long stories till they fell asleep.

At intervals of a month or more Hardy rode down to Moroni and
each time he brought back some book of poems, or a novel, or a
bundle of magazines; but if he received any letters he never
mentioned it. Sometimes he read in the shade, his face sobered to a
scholarly repose, and when the mood came and he was alone he
wrote verses--crude, feverish, unfinished--and destroyed them,
furtively.

He bore his full share of the rough work, whether riding or
horse-breaking or building brush corrals, but while he responded to
every mood of his changeable companion he hid the whirl of emotion
which possessed him, guarding the secret of his heart even when
writing to Lucy Ware; and slowly, as the months crept by, the wound
healed over and left him whole.

At last the days grew shorter, the chill came back into the morning
air, and the great thunder-caps which all Summer had mantled the
Peaks, scattering precarious and insufficient showers across the
parching lowlands, faded away before the fresh breeze from the coast.
Autumn had come, and, though the feed was scant, Creede started his
round-up early, to finish ahead of the sheep. Out on The Rolls the
wild and runty cows were hiding their newborn calves; the spring twos
were grown to the raw-boned dignity of steers; and all must be
gathered quickly, before the dust arose in the north and the sheep
mowed down the summer grass. Once more from their distant ranches the
mountain men trailed in behind their horses; the _rodeo_ hands dropped
in from nowhere, mysteriously, talking loudly of high adventures but
with the indisputable marks of Mormon hay-forks on their thumbs.

Before their restless energy The Rolls were swept bare of market
stock, and the