……The wind slammed across the meadow—bashed the canyon wall—and dribbled its load in the creek that tumbled beneath the rocks…….
The sweltering July gale—whimpered off Raton Pass. The wind banged the door of Wootton's Station—but not before it had sheathed the shriveled room with filth. The half-breed cook blasphemed—and moved to mantle the dough rising in wooden troughs. Too late. The dough was grit-sprinkled.
He nodded and recuperated—to peeling potatoes. Grime devils—one clockwise, one counterclockwise seethed in the meadow below—get spliced themselves in wrath—and tore through the truck garden—scourging the corn tassles. Chicken were pushed along pell-mell—bumping into one another as they flopped toward the blacksmith shop.
The grime devil split in two. One drifted itself out against the canyon walls. The other coursed through the empty meadow where wagon trains sometimes rested—then picked up some straw and a shred of newspaper with "Santa Fe, July 4, 1867."
The wind slammed across the meadow—bashed the canyon wall—and dribbled its load in the creek that tumbled beneath the rocks. Four miles below the station, high on the hills above a place called The Narrow, the wind tore at the scrub oaks and the buffalo grass. Three horses—tethered out of sight of the trail below, hissed off flies and nuzzled the ground.