Melissy of the Bar Double G - Chapter 2 Brand Blotting

The tenderfoot, slithering down a hillside of shale, caught at a
greasewood bush and waited. The sound of a rifle shot had drifted across
the ridge to him. Friend or foe, it made no difference to him now. He had
reached the end of his tether, must get to water soon or give up the
fight.

No second shot broke the stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle
trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down
upon a land parched by æons of drought, a land still making its brave show
of greenness against a dun background.

Arrow straight the man made for the hill crest. Weak as a starved puppy,
his knees bent under him as he climbed. Down and up again a dozen times,
he pushed feverishly forward. All day he had been seeing things. Cool
lakes had danced on the horizon line before his tortured vision. Strange
fancies had passed in and out of his mind. He wondered if this, too, were
a delusion. How long that stiff ascent took him he never knew, but at
last he reached the summit and crept over its cactus-covered shoulder.

He looked into a valley dressed in its young spring garb. Of all deserts
this is the loveliest when the early rains have given rebirth to the hope
that stirs within its bosom once a year. But the tenderfoot saw nothing of
its pathetic promise, of its fragile beauty so soon to be blasted. His
sunken eyes swept the scene and found at first only a desert waste in
which lay death.