is words. "This
live-stock here's not enjoying itself like its owners in town. This
live-stock was intended for Eastern folks' dinner.--But you've got
ahead of 'em this trip," he said to the ravens. He laughed loudly,
and, hearing himself, stopped, and his face became stern. "You don't
want to talk this way, Russ Genesmere. Shut your head. You're
alone.--I wish I'd never known!" he suddenly cried out.

He went to his animals and sat down by them, clasping and unclasping his
hands. The mules were lying down on the baked mud of the wallow with
their loads on, and he loosed them. He stroked his white horse for some
little while, thinking; and it was in his heart that he had brought
these beasts into this scrape. It was sunset and cool. Against the
divine fires of the west the peaks towered clear in splendor impassive,
and forever aloof, and the universe seemed to fill with infinite
sadness. "If she'll tell me it's not so," he said, "I'll believe her. I
will believe her now. I'll make myself. She'll help me to." He took what
rest he dared, and started up from it much later than he had intended,
having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. It
was nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by his
increasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed the
mountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by a
mule fell and could not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well for
all to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the sky
at the same time bedded invisible in black clouds. And when his hand
reached for a cloud that came bellying down to him, it changed into a
pretzel, and salt burned in his mouth at the sight of it. He turned away
and saw the hot, unshaded mountains wrinkled in the sun, glazed and
shrunk, gullied like the parchment of an old man's throat; and then he
saw a man in a steeple-hat. He could no more lay the spectre that wasted
his mind than the thirst-demon which raged in his body. He shut his
eyes, and then his arm was beating at something to keep it away.
Pillowed on his saddle, he beat until he forgot. A blow at the corner of
his eye brought him up sitting, and a raven jumped from his chest.

"You're not experienced," said Genesmere. "I'm not dead yet. But I'm
obliged to you for being so enterprising. You've cleared my head. Quit
that talk, Russ Genesmere." He went to the mule that had given out
during the night