High Lonesome

That was always the trouble…everything a man wanted to do lay ahead of him.

The whole town was like that. Probably there weren't three men in town who had not used guns, and used them a lot.

What man would not want such a woman? Not one to follow only, but to stand beside him during the dark days, to work with him, to plan with him, to share with him, making their life a whole thing together.

The man on horseback, the lone-riding man, the lone-thinking man, possessed an image of himself that was in part his own, in part a piece of all the dime novels he had read, for no man is free of the image his literature imposes upon him.

Folks talk a lot about the maternal feeling in women, but they say nothing about man's need to protect and care for someone; yet the one feeling is as basic as the other.

There are no dawns like the dawns that come to desert lands, nor are there colors anywhere like the pastels of the wastelands. There is no atmosphere anywhere with half the sharp clarity of the desert air following a rain--and no land holds death so close, so ready, so waiting. Now the rain was over, the dry washes had carried away the weight of water, their swift torrents running away to leave their sands once more exposed to the relentless heat of the sun. Only the desert plants were greener, and the countless tiny roots that lay just beneath the surface had drunk greedily of the sudden rush of desert water. Nowhere is survival so sharply geared to the changes of weather. Seeds lie dormant, mixed with the sand; a little rain falls, and nothing happens, for the water that has fallen is not enough for the seed to sprout. Within the seed some delicate mechanism awaits sufficient water; then suddenly, when it comes, the seed sprouts and grows, other plants put out their quick leaves, and for the moment the desert is alive, glowing, beautiful.