Long-haired men lolled in tent doors cleaning their rifles,
and women moved between the wagons and the fires, or sat in rims of
shade sewing and talking low. Children were everywhere, their spirits
undimmed by disaster, their voices calling from the sage, little,
light, half-naked figures circling and bending in games that babies
played when men lived in cliffs and caves. At sight of the mounted
figures they fled, wild as rabbits, scurrying behind tent flaps and
women's skirts, to peep out in bright-eyed curiosity at the strangers.
The mother met them and almost dragged the doctor from his horse. She
was a toil-worn woman of middle age, a Mater Dolorosa now in her hour
of anguish. She led them to where the boy lay in a clearing in the
sage. The brush was so high that a blanket had been fastened to the
tops of the tallest blushes, and under its roof he was stretched,
gray-faced and with sharpened nose. The broken leg had been bound
between rough splints of board, and he had traveled a week in the
wagons in uncomplaining agony. Now, spent and silent, he awaited
death, looking at the newcomers with the slow, indifferent glance of
those whose ties with life are loosening.
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