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Show That night we checked the truth of Father's tales about the beauty of wild horses, told us before we left California. Evidently we pitched our makeshift tent near the path a wild band liked to follow to the water hole we'd rejected. They must have crept down quietly to the spring. When they'd filled their bellies they found courage and hustled back. We were awakened by a thunderous drum of hooves. In the moonlight we could glimpse them through junipers galloping with a flowing grace that wild creatures can have. A city girl born in Illinois, Edna was delighted. We formed a sort of distant friendship with the wild mustangs. As they came down every night to drink they became not unfriendly, only wary. We saw them in daylight grazing or loping off to White Sage Valley, and they almost came to trust us. That was a strange and humorous honeymoon. We were in a mood to enjoy almost everything. For example, our bathtub. Down the wash from our "well" I dug a trench in the gravel clear to bedrock. The water flowed in constantly from the upper end and out the lower end. It was icy but invigorating. I made an oven of rock and clay, and Edna managed to bake a raisin pie in it. We even made light of the young rattlesnake that wriggled out from under our pinebough bed our last evening in the Wah Wahs. Soon after we unloaded our gear at home Father came bearing a canteloupe in each hand and smiling quizzically. "I had to watch them like a hawk," he grinned. "Once they start to get ripe, the cats make the rounds of the patch regularly to smell them. When a melon gets the right odor the cats claw into it and eat some of it. But I beat them to these." |