The scream of an eagle, the bleating of sheep, the bark of a
coyote were once more the only familiar sounds accentuating the silence
of the plateau. For Hare, time seemed to stand still. He thought but
little; his whole life was a matter of feeling from without. He rose at
dawn, never failing to see the red sun tip the eastern crags; he glowed
with the touch of cold spring-water and the morning air; he trailed
Silvermane under the cedars and thrilled when the stallion, answering his
call, thumped the ground with hobbled feet and came his way, learning day
by day to be glad at sight of his master. He rode with Mescal behind the
flock; he hunted hour by hour, crawling over the fragrant brown mats of
cedar, through the sage and juniper, up the grassy slopes. He rode back
to camp beside Mescal, drove the sheep, and put Silvermane to his
fleetest to beat Black Bolly down the level stretch where once the gray,
even with freedom at stake, had lost to the black. Then back to camp and
fire and curling blue smoke, a supper that testified to busy Piute's
farmward trips, sunset on the rim, endless changing desert, the wind in
the cedars, bright stars in the blue, and sleep--so time stood still.
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