Zane Grey

The U. P. Trail Zane Grey

Deep in the Wyoming hills lay a valley watered by a stream that ran down from Cheyenne Pass; aband of Sioux Indians had an encampment there. Viewed from the summit of a grassy ridge, thescene was colorful and idle and quiet, in keeping with the lonely, beautiful valley. Cottonwoods andwillows showed a bright green; the course of the stream was marked in dark where the water ran, and light where the sand had bleached; brown and black dots scattered over the valley were in realitygrazing horses; lodge-pole tents gleamed white in the sun, and tiny bits of red stood out against thewhite; lazy wreaths of blue smoke rose upward. The Wyoming hills were split by many such valleys and many such bare, grassy ridges sloped uptoward the mountains. Upon the side of one ridge, the highest, there stood a solitary mustang, haltered with a lasso. He was a ragged, shaggy, wild beast, and there was no saddle or bridle on him, nothing but the halter. He was not grazing, although the bleached white grass grew long and thickunder his hoofs. He looked up the slope, in a direction indicated by his pointing ears, and watched awavering movement of the long grass. It was wild up on that ridge, bare of everything except grass, and the strange wavering had anameless wildness in its motion. No stealthy animal accounted for that trembling-that forwardundulating quiver. It wavered on to the summit of the rid