WILD THINGS AND TAME
of earth before sunrise was here, making them shiver and hurry. They turned into the main road, not retracing the way Carron had ridden two days before, but to the left, continuing along a grade that followed the course of the creek bed for a little, and then climbed higher, left the empty stream behind, and lifted them into the joy of open spaces and full sun. With the horses at hard trot, now drawn apart, now side by side, each wild with a desire to outstrip the other, the communication of the riders was no longer by words, but by community of looks, and in mutual sensation, feeling the same rhythm of motion, seeing the same shadows running toward them and flitting backward, with expanded nostrils taking in the same dry, pure air, and facing together the bright north. The sky was the color of pale turquoise and promised heat, but the sun still struck yellowly from the east, and where for a little way trees closed in about the road a chill lay in the shadow. They descended into shallow hollows; they breasted the baldish tops of long waves of land, each seeming to lift them a little higher than the last. On the left they saw flitting glimpses, now of a bit of blue sky-line, now the pale brown glimmer of a valley; on the right a rougher country, of forest; and beyond, the sharp, high heads of the chain of sugar-loafs, which marked the course
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