he rope corral was
filled with circling horses half hidden by the veil of dust thrown
upward by their restless, trampling hoofs. Now he was in the midst of
them, a coil of rope in his left hand; his right swung the loop
circling over his head. And the choking dust was in his eyes and
throat, and in his nostrils the rank odor of many horses. Men were
shouting to one another above the confusion. Oaths were hurled after a
horse which warily dodged the rope. Saddles strewed the ground, bits
clanked, spurs jingled, care-free laughs brightened the clamor.

The scene shifted. He was sitting, helpless, in the saddle while Glory
carried him wantonly over the hills, shaking his head to make the
broken bridle rattle. Now he was stopping in front of a vine-covered
porch, where a girl lay sleeping in a hammock--a girl with soft, dark
hair falling down to the floor in a heavy braid. Again, he was sitting
on the school-house steps, holding a smoking gun in his hand, and the
schoolma'am was standing, flushed and reproving, before him. The wind
came and fluttered her skirts--

"What's the matter, Bill? Yuh sick?"

Weary raised a white, haggard face. The plains, the blue sky, the
sunshine, the wind, the girl--were gone. He was sitting upon a torn
bale of hay in a livery stable in Portland. Through the wide, open
door he could see the muddy street. Gray water-needles darted
incessantly up from the pavement where the straight lines of rain
struck. On the roof the rain was drumming a monotone. In his fingers
was a crumpled bit of gray sage-brush.

"Sick, Bill?" repeated the foreman, sympathetically.

"Oh, go to hell!" said Weary, ungratefully. He felt tired, and weak
and old. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted--God, how he wanted
the dream to come back to him, and to come back to him true! To close
about him and wrap him in its sunny folds; to steep his senses in the
light and the life, the sound and the smell of the plains; to hear the
wind rushing over the treeless hills; to see the wild range cattle
nosing the crisp, prairie grass.

He got unsteadily upon his legs and went slowly to his room; dropped
wearily upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow like a hurt
child. In his fingers he clutched a pungent, gray weed.

PART SIX

Late that night Weary, his belongings stuffed hurriedly into the
suit-case he called his "war-bag," started home; so impatient he had a
childish desire to ride upon the