Edwin L. Sabin

“ He clutched me by the arm. “Did you ever see her, that hussy, that scarlet woman, that—that—yes, and my own wife who made me lose faith in woman, man, and God; took my youth from me, sent me wandering about without home and without charity? Curse her! The end of the trail, and what do I find? Dry bones. Whose bones?” He faltered, and he implored, simply: “You guessed? You’re too young to have been on the plains in those days. Did you know him?”
“Pierre Lavelle?”
“Ah!” he quavered. He dashed down the half coin. “Are you going to tell me these bones are his? No, no! Such men as he live long. ”

“ My passenger’s voice dinned hollowly into my ear, through our ’phone.
“A country God forgot. And there’s nothing here. Useless, useless! We must go on.”
But I had to do it. Passing with a great rush we turned into the wind, and breasting, fluttering, managed to strike just at the edge of a flat-top butte or mesa. We bounded, rolled, checked, halted, and there we were.
My passenger was out first, divested of his safety harness. He acted like one distraught. Our brief stop near Cheyenne had vexed him—he had wished to spend either more time there, or less time. ”

“ In the long overland stretches the aviator pays scant attention to the dead epics that he violates with the drumming blast of his propeller when he bores through the atmosphere above those plains where the spirits still dance in little dust whirls that pivot and career with no breath of wind. ”