Old Brackton, a man of varied Western experience, kept the one store, which was tavern, trading-post, freighter’s headquarters, blacksmith’s shop, and any thing else needful.  Brackton employed riders, teamsters, sometimes Indians, to freight supplies in once a month from Durango.  And that was over two hundred miles away.  Sometimes the supplies did not arrive on time—­occasionally not at all.  News from the outside world, except that elicited from the taciturn travelers marching into Utah, drifted in at intervals.  But it was not missed.  These wilderness spirits were the forerunners of a great, movement, and as such were big, strong, stern, sufficient unto themselves.  Life there was made possible by horses.  The distant future, that looked bright to far-seeing men, must be and could only be fulfilled through the endurance and faithfulness of horses.  And then, from these men, horses received the meed due them, and the love they were truly worth.  The Navajo was a nomad horseman, an Arab of the Painted Desert, and the Ute Indian was close to him.  It was they who developed the white riders of the uplands as well as the wild-horse wrangler or hunter.

Brackton’s ramshackle establishment stood down at the end of the village street.  There was not a sawed board in all that structure, and some of the pine logs showed how they had been dropped from the bluff.  Brackton, a little old gray man, with scant beard, and eyes like those of a bird, came briskly out to meet an incoming freighter.  The wagon was minus a hind wheel, but the teamster had come in on three wheels and a pole.  The sweaty, dust-caked, weary, thin-ribbed mustangs, and the gray-and-red-stained wagon, and the huge jumble of dusty packs, showed something of what the journey had been.

“Hi thar, Red Wilson, you air some late gettin’ in,” greeted old Brackton.

Red Wilson had red eyes from fighting the flying sand, and red dust pasted in his scraggy beard, and as he gave his belt an upward hitch little red clouds flew from his gun-sheath.

“Yep.  An’ I left a wheel an’ part of the load on the trail,” he said.

With him were Indians who began to unhitch the teams.  Riders lounging in the shade greeted Wilson and inquired for news.  The teamster replied that travel was dry, the water-holes were dry, and he was dry.  And his reply gave both concern and amusement.

“One more trip out an’ back—­thet’s all, till it rains,” concluded Wilson.

Brackton led him inside, evidently to alleviate part of that dryness.

Water and grass, next to horses, were the stock subject of all riders.

“It’s got oncommon hot early,” said one.

“Yes, an’ them northeast winds—­hard this spring,” said another.

“No snow on the uplands.”

“Holley seen a dry spell comin’.  Wal, we can drift along without freighters. 
There’s grass an’ water enough here, even if it doesn’t rain.”