Melissy of the Bar Double G - Chapter 1 A Crossed Trail

The tenderfoot rose from the ledge upon which he had been lying and
stretched himself stiffly. The chill of the long night had set him
shivering. His bones ached from the pressure of his body upon the rock
where he had slept and waked and dozed again with troubled dreams. The
sharpness of his hunger made him light-headed. Thirst tortured him. His
throat was a lime-kiln, his tongue swollen till it filled his mouth.

If the night had been bad, he knew the day would be a hundred times worse.
Already a gray light was sifting into the hollow of the sky. The vague
misty outlines of the mountains were growing sharper. Soon from a crotch
of them would rise a red hot cannon ball to pour its heat into the parched
desert.

He was headed for the Sonora line, for the hills where he had heard a man
might drop out of sight of the civilization that had once known him. There
were reasons why he had started in a hurry, without a horse or food or a
canteen, and these same reasons held good why he could not follow beaten
tracks. All yesterday he had traveled without sighting a ranch or meeting
a human being. But he knew he must get to water soon--if he were to reach
it at all.

A light breeze was stirring, and on it there was borne to him a faint
rumble as of thunder. Instantly the man came to a rigid alertness. Thunder
might mean rain, and rain would be salvation. But the sound did not die
away. Instead, it deepened to a steady roar, growing every instant louder.
His startled glance swept the cañon that drove like a sword cleft into the
hills. Pouring down it, with the rush of a tidal wave, came a wall of
cattle, a thousand backs tossing up and down as the swell of a troubled
sea. Though he had never seen one before, the man on the lip of the gulch
knew that he was watching a cattle stampede. Under the impact of the
galloping hoofs the ground upon which he stood quaked.