CHAPTER XI - THE CAMPAIGN OPENS
The summit of a hill, however insignificant its altitude, is always an inspiring vantage point from which to survey the surrounding world. There is a briskness of atmosphere on a hilltop which is inspiriting to the most jaded of faculties; there is a sparkling vitality in the breath of the morning air which must ever make life a joy and the world seem an inexpressible delight in which it is the acme of happiness to dwell.
The exigencies of prairie life demand the habit of early rising, and more often does the tiny human atom, which claims for its home the vast tracts of natural pasture, gaze upon the sloth of the orb of day than does that glorious sphere smile down upon a sleeping world.
Far as the eye can reach stretch the mighty wastes of waving grass—the undulating plains of ravishing verdure. What breadth of thought must thus be inspired in one who gazes out across the boundless expanse at the glories of a perfect sunrise? How insignificant becomes the petty affairs of man when gazing upon the majesty of God's handiwork. How utterly inconceivable becomes the association of evil with such transcendently beautiful creation? Surely no evil was intended to lurk in the shadow of so much simple splendor.
And yet does the ghastly specter of crime haunt the perfect plains, the majestic valleys, the noiseless, inspiring pine woods, the glistening, snow-capped hills. And so it must remain as long as the battle of life continues undecided—so long as the struggle for existence endures.
The Hon. Bunning-Ford rose while yet the daylight was struggling to overcome the shades of night. He stood upon the tiny veranda which fronted his minute house, smoking his early morning cigarette. He was waiting for his coffee—that stimulating beverage which few who have lived in the wilds of the West can do without—and idly luxuriating in the wondrous charm of scene which was spread out before him. "Lord" Bill was not a man of great poetic mind, but he appreciated his adopted country—"God's country," as he was wont to call it—as can only those who have lived in it. The prairie had become part of his very existence, and he loved to contemplate the varying lights and colors which moved athwart the fresh spring-clad plains as the sun rose above the eastern horizon.
The air was chill, but withal invigorating, as he watched the steely blue of the daylit sky slowly give place to the rosy tint of sunrise. Slowly at first—then faster—great waves of golden light seemed to leap from the top of one green rising ground to another; the gray white of the snowy western mountains passed from one dead shade to another, until, at last, they gleamed like alabaster from afar with a diamond brilliancy almost painful to the eye. Thus the sun rose like some mighty caldron of fire mounting into the cloudless azure of a perfect sky, showering unctuous rays of light and heat upon the chilled life that was of its own creating.
Bill was still lost in thought, gazing out upon the perfect scene from the vantage point of the hill upon which his "shack" stood, when round the corner of the house came a half-breed, bearing a large tin pannikin of steaming coffee. He took the pannikin from the man and propped himself against a post which helped to support the roof of the veranda.
"Are the boys out yet?" he asked the waiting Breed, and nodding towards the corrals, which reposed at the foot of the hill and were overlooked by the house.
"I guess," the fellow replied laconically. Then, as an afterthought, "They're getting breakfast, anyhow."