CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Missing Chord
I STOPPED overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time when I called “Hallo!” at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas code, undeniable friends.
After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the hard-packed loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably concerning the affairs of the rest of the world.
As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring. An inventory must suffice.
The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient prairie, diversified by arroyos and
