Over the shoulder of a hill came a whistling which might have been
attributed to the wind, had not this day been deathly calm. It was fit
music for such a scene, for it seemed neither of heaven nor earth,
but the soul of the great god Pan come back to earth to charm those
nameless rocks with his wild, sweet piping. It changed to harmonious
phrases loosely connected. Such might be the exultant improvisations
of a master violinist.
A great wolf, or a dog as tall and rough coated as a wolf, trotted
around the hillside. He paused with one foot lifted and lolling,
crimson tongue, as he scanned the distance and then turned to look
back in the direction from which he had come. The weird music changed
to whistled notes as liquid as a flute. The sound drew closer. A
horseman rode out on the shoulder and checked his mount. One could not
choose him at first glance as a type of those who fight nature in a
region where the thermometer moves through a scale of a hundred and
sixty degrees in the year to an accompaniment of cold-stabbing winds
and sweltering suns. A thin, handsome face with large brown eyes and
black hair, a body tall but rather slenderly made--he might have been
a descendant of some ancient family of Norman nobility; but could such
proud gentry be found riding the desert in a tall-crowned sombrero
with chaps on his legs and a red bandana handkerchief knotted around
his throat? That first glance made the rider seem strangely out of
place in such surroundings.
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