twelve miles, withdrawn from the trail, hobbled his horse and stretched out for needed repose. The strain of the day had been heavy; he was weary, and sore from unaccustomed travel in the saddle.
There was a smell of summer in the night wind, a sound of summer in the zirr of insects, which seemed far away, distant revellers in what bowers of green he could not guess. He was lonesome; he longed for the scent of a black, moist furrow, the melon-sweet odor of blooming corn.
It didn't appeal to him as much of a life, riding by day, and day after day, in the unvarying dumb routine of guarding plodding cattle on the trail, or watching over them on the range, to bunk down on the ground at night like a hog. Romance had glamored over the mind-cramping routine and the hardships, as romance always gilds its trumpery, after the fashion of sin.
As soon as it was light enough to find his horse, which had wandered far in the freedom of a too-humane hobble, Bill mixed up a mess of biscuit dough, which turned out a distressing failure of burnt crust and clammy interior, and leaded himself down like a diver. He thought if he felt as heavy to the horse as he did to himself with that mess inside him, he'd wear the poor old devil out before he reached the Arkansas. The sun was well up when he took the trail again, with a look toward the south, where he expected to see the dust of Hughes' herd on the march.
There was no sign of the herd. Bill speculated on how things were with Hughes by that time: whether the Kansas cattlemen had forced him to go back, or
