The Long Chance

The Long Chance

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Title: The Long Chance
Author: Peter B. Kyne
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THE LONG CHANCE
[Illustration: IT WAS THE DESERT CALL FOR HELP; THREE
FIRES IN A ROW BY NIGHT. THREE COLUMNS OF SMOKE
AGAINST THE HORIZON BY DAY.]

THE LONG CHANCE
BY
PETER B. KYNE

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK TENNY JOHNSON
1914

PRINTED AT GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A.

THE LONG CHANCE

CHAPTER I
It was sunrise on the Colorado desert.
As the advance guard of dawn emerged from behind the serrated peaks
to the east and paused on their snow-encrusted summits before
charging down the slopes into the open desert to rout the lingering
shadows of the night, a coyote came out of his den in the tumbled
malpais at the foot of the range, pointed his nose skyward and voiced

his matutinal salute to the Hosts of Light.
Presently, far in the distant waste, seven dark objects detached
themselves from the shadows and crawled toward the mountains. Like
motes swimming in a beam of light, they came out of the Land of
Nowhere, in the dim shimmering vistas over west, where the gray line
of grease-wood met the blue of the horizon. Slowly they assumed
definite shape; and the coyote ceased his orisons to speculate upon the
ultimate possibility of breakfast and this motley trio of "desert rats"
with their burro train, who dared invade his desolate waterless
kingdom.
For, with the exception of the four burros, the three men who followed
in their wake did, indeed, offer the rare spectacle of variety in this land
of superlative monotony. One of the men wore a peaked Mexican straw
hat, a dirty white cotton undershirt, faded blue denim overalls and a
pair of shoes much too large for him; this latter item indicating a desire
to get the most for his money, after the invariable custom of a primitive
people. He carried a peeled catclaw gad in his right hand, and with this
gad he continually urged to a shuffling half-trot some one of the four
burros. This man was a Cahuilla Indian.
His two companions were white men. The younger of the pair was a
man under thirty years of age, with kind bright eyes and the drawn but
ruddy face of one whose strength seems to have been acquired more
from athletic sports than by hard work. He was tall, broad-shouldered,
slim- waisted, big-hipped and handsome; he stepped along through the
clinging sand with the lithe careless grace of a mountain lion. An old
greasy wide-brimmed gray felt hat, pinched to a "Montana peak," was
shoved back on his curly black head; his shirt, of light gray wool, had
the sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing powerful forearms tanned to
the complexion of those of the Indian. He seemed to revel in the airy
freedom of a pair of dirty old white canvas trousers, and despite the
presence of a long-barreled blue gun swinging at his hip he would have
impressed an observer as the embodiment of kindly good nature and
careless indifference to convention, provided his own personal comfort
was assured.

The other white man was plainly an alien in the desert. He was slight,
blonde, pale--a city man--with hard blue eyes set so close together that
one understood instantly something of the nature of the man as well as
the urgent necessity for his thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles. He
wore a new Panama hat, corded riding breeches and leggings.