Bred of the Desert: A Horse and a Romance

BRED OF THE DESERT
A HORSE AND A ROMANCE
MARCUS HORTON
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED APRIL, 1915
A. D. B. S. H.
WHO TAUGHT CONSIDERATION FOR THE DUMB THIS WORK IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED
It was high noon in the desert, but there was no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low over the earth, it took on changing color, from pink to gray, from gray to black–gloom that precedes tropical showers. Then the wind came–a breeze rising as it were from the hot earth–forcing the Spanish dagger to dipping acknowledgment, sending dust-devils swirling across the slow curves of the desert–and then the storm burst in all its might. For this was a storm–a sand-storm of the Southwest.
Down the slopes to the west billowed giant clouds of sand. At the bottom these clouds tumbled and surged and mounted, and then, resuming their headlong course, swept across the flat land bordering the river, hurtled across the swollen Rio Grande itself, and so on up the gentle rise of ground to the town, where they swung through the streets in ruthless strides–banging signs, ripping up roofings, snapping off branches–and then lurched out over the mesa to the east. Here, as if in glee over their escape from city confines, they redoubled in fury and tore down to earth–and enveloped Felipe Montoya, a young and good-looking Mexican, and his team of scrawny horses plodding in a lumber rigging, all in a stinging swirl.