While renewing their supplies at the fort they camped under a live oak.
It was a mighty growth, its domed outline fretted with the fineness of
horny leaves, its vast boughs outflung in contorted curves. The river
sucked about its roots. Outside its shade the plain grew dryer under
unclouded suns, huge trees casting black blots of shadow in which the
Fort's cattle gathered. Sometimes vaqueros came from the gates in the
adobe walls, riding light and with the long spiral leap of the lasso
rising from an upraised hand. Sometimes groups of half-naked Indians
trailed through the glare, winding a way to the spot of color that was
their camp.
To the girl it was all wonderful, the beauty, the peace, the cessation
of labor. When the men were at the Fort she lay beneath the great tree
watching the faint, white chain of the mountains, or the tawny valley
burning to orange in the long afternoons. For once she was idle, come
at last to the end of all her journeyings. Only the present, the
tranquil, perfect present, existed. What did not touch upon it, fit in
and have some purpose in her life with the man of whom she was a part,
was waste matter.
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