With
din of hoofs and bleats the sheep spilled themselves over the precipice,
and an awful deafening roar boomed up from the river, like the spreading
thunderous crash of an avalanche.
How endless seemed that fatal plunge! The last line of sheep, pressing
close to those gone before, and yet impelled by the strange instinct of
life, turned their eyes too late on the brink, carried over by their own
momentum.
The sliding roar ceased; its echo, muffled and hollow, pealed from the
cliffs, then rumbled down the canyon to merge at length in the sullen,
dull, continuous sound of the rapids.
Hare turned at last from that narrow iron-walled cleft, the depth of
which he had not seen, and now had no wish to see; and his eyes fell upon
a little Navajo lamb limping in the trail of the flock, headed for the
canyon, as sure as its mother in purpose. He dismounted and seized it to
find, to his infinite wonder and gladness, that it wore a string and bell
round its neck. It was Mescal's pet.
X
RIDING THE RANGES
THE shepherds were home in the oasis that evening, and next day the
tragedy of the sheep was a thing of the past.
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