Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/70



so is one who is totally blind, for these live some what more within themselves and do not go out to battle with the world, or at least, do not attempt to match it in the daily struggle ; but you put a one- eyed man or a cripple in the fight, and unless he is very good, he is very bad indeed.

I went up to my pony, standing on three legs with his nose in the hay, put my arms around his neck, talked baby-talk to him, and felt as with an old friend. There was a little opening overhead, a place where they put hay down from the loft. I looked up. An idea struck me. I looked over my shoulder for the negro. No one was there. I climbed up like a cat ; found a hump of hay, crept into it, and was soon fast asleep.

It was not a pleasant bed. The wind whistled through the loft, and though I crept and cowered into the very heart of the hay-pile, the frost followed me up unmercifully. I descended with the dawn, lest the negro should be there, and was on the street even before the Chinamen, and long before the sun. A frost was on the ground, and a taste of winter in the air and wind.

To the west the pine hills were brown with the dead grass, then farther up, green with pine and fir, then white with frost and snow.

I walked up the single long street in that direc tion, the hills began to flash back the sun that glowed from Shasta s helmet, and my heart rose up with the sun. I said, " The world is before me.