Then doubt intruded. After all, was it so great? Did not its sublimity overpass a little the bounds of the ridiculous? Had he seen true? Had he failed again? He reread the poem carefully; and it seemed all at once to lose force.
By now, Presley could not tell whether what he had written was true poetry or doggerel. He distrusted profoundly his own judgment. He must have the opinion of someone else, someone competent to judge. He could not wait; tomorrow would not do. He must know to a certainty before he could rest that night.
He made a careful copy of what he had written, and putting on his hat and laced boots, went downstairs and out upon the lawn, crossing over to the stables. He found Phelps there, washing down the buckboard.
“Do you know where Vanamee is today?” he asked the latter. Phelps put his chin in the air.
“Ask me something easy,” he responded. “He might be at Guadalajara, or he might be up at Osterman’s, or he might be a hundred miles away from either place. I know where he ought to be, Mr. Presley, but that ain’t saying where the crazy gesabe is. He ought to be range-riding over east of Four, at the head waters of Mission Creek.”
“I’ll try for him there, at all events,” answered Presley. “If you see Harran when he comes in, tell him I may not be back in time for supper.”
Presley found the pony in the corral, cinched the saddle upon him, and went off over the Lower Road, going eastward at a brisk canter.
At Hooven’s he called a “How do you do” to Minna, whom he saw lying in a slat hammock under the mammoth live oak, her foot in bandages; and then galloped on over the bridge across the irrigating ditch, wondering vaguely what would become of such a pretty girl as Minna, and if in the end she would marry the Portuguese foreman in charge of the ditching-gang. He told himself that he hoped she would, and that speedily. There was no lack of comment as to Minna Hooven about the ranches. Certainly she was a good girl, but she was seen at all hours here and there about Bonneville and Guadalajara, skylarking with the Portuguese farmhands of Quien Sabe and Los Muertos. She was very pretty; the men made fools of themselves over her. Presley hoped they would not end by making a fool of her.
Just beyond the irrigating ditch, Presley left the Lower Road, and following a trail that branched off southeasterly from this point, held on across the Fourth Division of the ranch, keeping the Mission Creek on his left. A few miles farther on, he went through a gate in a barbed wire fence, and at once engaged himself in a system of little arroyos and low rolling hills, that steadily lifted and increased in size as he proceeded. This higher ground was the advance guard of the Sierra foothills, and served as the stock range for Los Muertos. The hills were huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats. At long intervals, were isolated live oaks. In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets. The ground was honeycombed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were everywhere. Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect. High overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the trail.
On the hillsides, in thinly scattered groups were the cattle, grazing deliberately, working slowly toward the water-holes for their evening drink, the horses keeping to themselves, the colts nuzzling at their mothers’ bellies, whisking their tails, stamping their unshod feet. But once in a remoter field, solitary, magnificent, enormous, the short hair curling tight upon his forehead, his small red eyes twinkling, his vast neck heavy with muscles, Presley came upon the monarch, the king, the great Durham bull, maintaining his lonely state, unapproachable, austere.
Presley found the onetime shepherd by a water-hole, in a far distant corner of the range. He had made his simple camp for the night. His blue-grey army blanket lay spread under a live oak, his horse grazed near at hand. He himself sat on his heels before a little fire of dead manzanita roots, cooking his coffee and bacon. Never had Presley conceived so keen an impression of loneliness as his crouching figure presented. The bald, bare landscape widened about him to infinity. Vanamee was a spot in it all, a tiny dot, a single atom of human organisation, floating endlessly on the ocean of an illimitable nature.
The two friends ate together, and Vanamee, having snared a brace of quails, dressed and then roasted them on a sharpened stick. After eating, they drank great refreshing draughts from the water-hole. Then, at length, Presley having lit his cigarette, and Vanamee his pipe, the former said:
“Vanamee, I have been writing again.”
Vanamee turned his lean ascetic face toward him, his black eyes fixed attentively.
“I know,” he said, “your journal.”
“No, this is a poem. You remember, I told you about it once. ‘The Toilers,’ I called it.”
“Oh, verse! Well, I am glad you have gone back to it. It is your natural vehicle.”
“You remember the poem?” asked Presley. “It was unfinished.”
“Yes, I remember it. There was better promise in it than anything you ever wrote. Now, I suppose, you have finished it.”
Without reply, Presley brought it from out the breast pocket of his shooting coat. The moment
