Windy amused but did not greatly persuade me.  By this time I was fairly conversant with the cowboy’s sense of humour.  Nothing would have tickled them more than to bluff me out of a harmless excursion by means of scareful tales.  Shortly Windy Bill turned off to examine a distant bunch of cattle; and so I rode on alone.

It was coming on toward evening.  Against the eastern mountains were floating tinted mists; and the canons were a deep purple.  The cattle were moving slowly so that here and there a nimbus of dust caught and reflected the late sunlight into gamboge yellows and mauves.  The magic time was near when the fierce, implacable day-genius of the desert would fall asleep and the soft, gentle, beautiful star-eyed night-genius of the desert would arise and move softly.  My pony racked along in the desert.  The mass that represented Hooper’s ranch drew imperceptibly nearer.  I made out the green of trees and the white of walls and building.

CHAPTER II

Hooper’s ranch proved to be entirely enclosed by a wall of adobe ten feet high and whitewashed.  To the outside it presented a blank face.  Only corrals and an alfalfa patch were not included.  A wide, high gateway, that could be closed by massive doors, let into a stable yard, and seemed to be the only entrance.  The buildings within were all immaculate also:  evidently Old Man Hooper loved whitewash.  Cottonwood trees showed their green heads; and to the right I saw the sloped shingled roof of a larger building.  Not a living creature was in sight.  I shook myself, saying that the undoubted sinister feeling of utter silence and lifelessness was compounded of my expectations and the time of day.  But that did not satisfy me.  My aroused mind, casting about, soon struck it:  I was missing the swarms of blackbirds, linnets, purple finches, and doves that made our own ranch trees vocal.  Here were no birds.  Laughing at this simple explanation of my eerie feeling, I passed under the gate and entered the courtyard.

It, too, seemed empty.  A stable occupied all one side; the other three were formed by bunk houses and necessary out-buildings.  Here, too, dwelt absolute solitude and absolute silence.  It was uncanny, as though one walked in a vacuum.  Everything was neat and shut up and whitewashed and apparently dead.  There were no sounds or signs of occupancy.  I was as much alone as though I had been in the middle of an ocean.  My mind, by now abnormally sensitive and alert, leaped on this idea.  For the same reason, it insisted—­lack of life:  there were no birds here, not even flies!  Of course, said I, gone to bed in the cool of evening:  why should there be?  I laughed aloud and hushed suddenly; and then nearly jumped out of my skin.  The thin blue curl of smoke had caught my eye; and I became aware of the figure of a man seated on the ground, in the shadow, leaning against the building.