PAINTED ROCK
mesquite, the long-horned steers and the prairie ponies. Then I saw the Californian mountains by Flagstaff shining with winter snow, and further still the Colorado River spread out glittering where it came through from the Grand Canon. I saw adobe Mexican townships and dark Mexicans in silver-braided hats; and cowboys loping into town to paint the place and themselves red as blood, and such a man as Silas Northrop, with one lonely finger on a scarred stump, and such another as "Cow Creek Briggs," a Colonel of swift Western promotion, with his "gun" in his hand. And I saw Jack too, and sighed.
I lifted my eyes and started, for it seemed to me that though the face I looked at was the face of the lawyer, the eyes I saw were the eyes of the man who fell by the alkaline waters of Cow Creek.
"What am I to do?" said Tom.
But Jack's eyes knew.
It's a strange thing how little one knows of oneself in civilisation. I meet civilised and peaceable citizens every day who are
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