Propped against the roof supports, hats drawn
low over their brows they slept, the riders pacing on ahead stooped and
silent on their sweating horses. There was no sound but the creaking
of the wheels, and the low whisperings of the river into which, now and
then, an undermined length of sand dropped with a splash.
But in the evening life returned. When the dusk stole out of the hill
rifts and the river flowed thick gold from bank to bank, when the
bluffs grew black against the sunset fires, the little party shook off
its apathy and animation revived. Coolness came with the twilight,
sharpening into coldness as the West burned from scarlet and gold to a
clear rose. The fire, a mound of buffalo chips into which glowing
tunnels wormed, was good. Overcoats and blankets were shaken out and
the fragrance of tobacco was on the air. The recrudescence of ideas
and the need to interchange them came on the wanderers. Hemmed in by
Nature's immensity, unconsciously oppressed by it, they felt the want
of each other, of speech, of sympathy, and crouched about the fire
telling anecdotes of their life "back home," that sounded trivial but
drew them closer in the bond of a nostalgic wistfulness.
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