Although the Yaqui was as his shadow, Gale reached a point when
he seemed to wander alone at twilight, in the night, at dawn. Far
down the arroyo, in the deepening red twilight, when the heat
rolled away on slow-dying wind, Blanco Sol raised his splendid
head and whistled for his master. Gale reproached himself for
neglect of the noble horse. Blanco Sol was always the same. He
loved four things--his master, a long drink of cool water, to graze
at will, and to run. Time and place, Gale thought, meant little
to Sol if he could have those four things. Gale put his arm over
the great arched neck and laid his cheek against the long white
mane, and then even as he stood there forgot the horse. What was
the dull, red-tinged, horizon-wide mantle creeping up the slope?
Through it the copper sun glowed, paled, died. Was it only twilight?
Was it gloom? If he thought about it he had a feeling that it was
the herald of night and the night must be a vigil, and that made
him tremble.
At night he had formed a habit of climbing up the lava slope as
far as the smooth trail extended, and there on a promontory he
paced to and fro, and watched the stars, and sat stone-still for
hours looking down at the vast void with its moving, changing
shadows. From that promontory he gazed up at a velvet-blue sky,
deep and dark, bright with millions of cold, distant, blinking
stars, and he grasped a little of the meaning of infinitude. He
gazed down into the shadows, which, black as they were and
impenetrable, yet have a conception of immeasurable space.
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