Black Mesa by Zane Grey

Author:Zane Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Reading Essentials
Published: 1955-08-02T05:00:00+00:00

Paul reread the note, and then dropped his head in a passion of fury and sorrow.

“Wal, what ails you?” queried Wess roughly. “Reckon I was wrong aboot Louie’s letter.”

“Read it,” replied Paul.

The cowboy knelt on one knee and spread the paper to the dying blaze. When Paul looked up again, it was to see Wess looming dark and silent above him. Silence seemed a fitting thing for both of them. Presently Kintell strode away into the blackness, and the lonely night surrounded Paul. The fire burned down to a bed of ruddy coals, in the heart of which he saw two great topaz eyes, so sad, so eloquent, so yearning that he had to hide them under more fuel. Then the fire crackled again and sprang up to brighten the lonely circle. At length Paul spread his saddle blankets on the grass, and composed himself to rest if not to sleep. When slumber did at last overtake him, Kintell had not yet returned.

Sunrise found Paul riding behind the cowboy far along the northern slope, gradually working up out of the rough and broken basin. Cattle were scattered all over the gray-green bowl, but not so thickly as Paul remembered upon the occasion of his first sight of this end of the valley. Kintell worked up to the rim, where on the comparative level they rode at a brisk trot.

The magnitude of the scene quite precluded Paul’s thinking of the object of their thirty-mile jaunt. They were approaching the environs of the great canyon. In front of them and all across the deep basin there was a wild and rough terrain which narrowed to a gap beyond which was the desert. The gateway was of weathered rock that led down between walls of yellow and red and black. Across the basin to the left an irregular break in the desert led back beyond the Painted Desert and marked the canyon rim; and to the right the rolling plain swept away to the base of the huge, gray-walled, black-fringed, snow-patched mountain that was the north wall of the great canyon. Paul guessed that the Colorado spread its wide and yawning gulf beyond that rolling plain. There was an immensity and sweep to the desert, a manifestation of age in its eternal gray, which was accentuated only by the rims and crags. As he turned his eyes to the south, Kishlipi appeared a weird purple shadow against the black lava cones which glittered in the sun and contrasted with cones of clay in shades of violet, mauve, heliotrope, blue. Beyond lay variegated patches of sand, colorful as a quilt, and still farther beyond the infinitude of the desert hazed in the full tide of the sun.

Kintell’s objective was the last level of the basin, under the red gate, where Paul previously had seen the column of smoke. To the surprise of both men they rode into a broad, freshly trodden cattle track.

The cowboy whooped. “Heah we air, boss, plain as the nose on yore face.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.