In the past he had not been of any use to himself or others;
and he had never know what it meant to be hungry, cold, tired,
lonely. He had never worked for anything. The needs of the day
had been provided, and to-morrow and the future looked the same.
Danger, peril, toil--these had been words read in books and papers.
In the present he used his hands, his senses, and his wits. He
had a duty to a man who relied on his services. He was a comrade,
a friend, a valuable ally to riding, fighting rangers. He had spent
endless days, weeks that seemed years, alone with a horse, trailing
over, climbing over, hunting over a desert that was harsh and hostile
by nature, and perilous by the invasion of savage men. That horse
had become human to Gale. And with him Gale had learned to know
the simple needs of existence. Like dead scales the superficialities,
the falsities, the habits that had once meant all of life dropped
off, useless things in this stern waste of rock and sand.
Gale's happiness, as far as it concerned the toil and strife, was
perhaps a grim and stoical one. But love abided with him, and it
had engendered and fostered other undeveloped traits--romance
and a feeling for beauty, and a keen observation of nature. He
felt pain, but he was never miserable. He felt the solitude, but
he was never lonely.
As he rode across the desert, even though keen eyes searched for
the moving black dots, the rising puffs of white dust that were
warnings, he saw Nell's face in every cloud.
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