Roy had ridden horseback a few times in the country, but as he dropped into Nigger’s saddle he felt as if he were sinking into an arm chair. Mr. Weston sat astride his pony watching the boy. Seeing him at last mounted and stirruped, there was a quick yell. “E yawp!” shouted the elder man, and with a flip of the reins, his pony whirled as if on a pivot and was off down the main street of Dolores. [With a clatter of hoofs, Nigger bounded forward.]
Roy gasped, caught his saddle pommel with one hand and his hat with the other. Then, remembering instructions, he grasped his reins, straightened out his legs and threw back his shoulders. Ahead rose a cloud of dust. It was Doolin’s four horses just crossing the railroad tracks to take the valley road. They were off at last.
[With a Clatter of Hoofs Nigger Bounded Forward]
As the two ponies scampered by the freight wagon and reached the southern limits of the town, Weston flipped his reins once more and the two animals slackened into a trot. Beyond the railroad switch yards and a fringe of adobe houses, the street passed over the brow of a rise and dropped at once into a road winding down the mountain side.
With a motion of his hand the ex-sheriff called Roy’s attention to the view. Westward the sloping ground fell gradually into a valley. Beyond a fringe of pinon timber on the lower slopes, the country ’marked with farms and ranches like a checkerboard, spread out to make Montezuma Valley—the last bit of fertility in the southwest. Far beyond these spots of green rose what seemed to be a yellow barrier.
“What’s the wall?” asked Roy, trying to copy Mr. Weston’s easy loll in the saddle.
“Wall,” laughed the old plainsman, “we’ll climb that wall to-morrer. That’s Utah and sand and alkali.”