SON OF THE WIND
They had hobbled Son of the Wind while morning was yet small and golden on the tops of the hills. Afternoon, rushing upon them, found their camp established. No need to cover trail now. The place in the wilderness was like a box broken open, the treasure of its inviolability gone. Trails were trampled, horses picketed. There was the reek of tobacco, the smoke of fires; and the odor of cooking was blown to noble, unhuman, indignant nostrils. Even on the other side of the Sphinx, ready for the man who wanted to make the shorter journey, a pony browsed among blowing fodder that had been strewn for him there. All was filled with the clutter of human expedients—beautiful if a man looks to the expedient—and Carron did. Some uneasy change in the atmosphere, sharpening odors of dead leaves, deepening of distance colors, intensifying of cold, warned him that time for what he wanted was growing short. How short he could not tell. Dawn of the next day showed him. The cold rose in the east lighted an ominous prospect. The sky, which yesterday had been violet, was blue like a sword; there was an edge in the air that went to the bone. A cloud stretched in a pathway from the east to the zenith, and its edges of opaque gray continually spread toward the north and south. Nature measures her seasons with no thought of giving a background
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