Who Wants to Live Forever?

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DALE CAME OUT of the cool dark house to the wide veranda. The ranch headquarters were on a mesa overlooking the Soledad Valley, and the eyes of the girl swept terrain that was largely part of the Seven Up and Down spread.

From the bluff upon which the house was set, the ground fell away sharply to the undulating floor of the valley through which the Soledad took its twisting way, a silver thread in the brown basin except where its banks were here and there green with cottonwoods and willows. For a dozen miles the eye could follow the river, to the huddled hills that concealed it before the plunge into Rabbit Ear Gorge. The Seven Up ran only to the park boundary. Beyond it lay the M K range.

Though the day was still so young that shreds of mist lingered in the gulches opposite and long shadows lanced into the desert from projecting cliffs, shimmering heat waves danced above the baked plain. Sunlight streamed across the cholla and the sage. In the south pasture Seven Up riders, diminutive from distance, moved among the cattle they were working. Dale heard the click of the windmill back of the house and the bawling of yearlings shut up in a corral behind the stable.

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