Chapter I

A Colt Is Born

It was high noon in the desert, but there was
no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a
twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across
the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering
everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily
onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low
over the earth, it took on changing color, from
pink to gray, from gray to black -- gloom that precedes
tropical showers. Then the wind came -- a
breeze rising as it were from the hot earth -- forcing
the Spanish dagger to dipping acknowledgment,
sending dust-devils swirling across the slow
curves of the desert -- and then the storm burst
in all its might. For this was a storm -- a sandstorm
of the Southwest.

Down the slopes to the west billowed giant
clouds of sand. At the bottom these clouds tumbled
and surged and mounted, and then, resuming

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