Of the hours which followed, of moaning wind and drifting sleet, nature kindly gave him oblivion. Dead tired, he slept. And morning, crisp, smiling, cloudless, was about him when he awoke.
Rising, and scarcely stopping for a lunch, the man again sallied forth upon his search, wading through drifts blown almost firm enough to bear the pony’s weight and alternate spots wind-swept bare as a floor; while all about, gorgeous as multiple rainbows, flashed mocking bright the shifting sparkle from innumerable frost crystals.
All the morning he searched, farther and farther away, until the country grew rougher and he was full ten miles from home. At last, stopping upon a small hill to reconnoitre, the searcher heard far in the distance a sound he recognized and which sent his cheek pale––the faint dying wail of a wounded steer. It came from a deep draw between two low hills, 81 one cut into a steep ravine by converged floods and hidden by the tall surrounding weeds. Bye knew the place well and the significance of the sound he heard. In a cattle country, after a sudden blizzard, it could have but one meaning, and that the terror of all time to animals wild or domestic––the end of a stampede.
Only too soon thereafter the searcher found his herd. Upon the brow of a hill overlooking the ravine he stopped. Below him, bellowing, groaning, struggling, wounded, dying, and dead––a great mass of heavy bodies, mixed indiscriminately––bruised, broken, segmented, blood-covered, horrible, lay the observer’s trust, the wealth of his employer, his own hope of regeneration, worse now than worthless carrion. And the cause of it all, the sole excuse for this delinquency, lay back there upon a greasy table in the shanty––a short scrawling tale scribbled upon a handful of scrap paper!
III
“Yes, I’m back, Bob.”
The tall, thin Calmar Bye leaned back in his 82 chair and looked listlessly about the familiar café, without a suggestion of emotion. It seemed to him hardly credible that he had been away from it all for a year and more. Nothing was changed. Across the room the same mirrors repeated the reflections he had observed so many times before. Nearby were the same booths and from within them came the same laughter and chatter and suppressed song. Opposite the tiny table the same man with the broad, good-natured face was making critical, smiling observation, as of yore. As ever, the look recalled the visionary to the present.
“Back for good, Bob,” he repeated slowly.
The speaker’s attitude was far from being that of a conquering hero returned; the sympathies of the easy-going Robert, ever responsive, were roused.
“What’s the matter, old man?” he queried tentatively. “Weren’t you a success as a broncho-buster?”