CONCLUSION 128
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THE MOCCASIN RANCH
I
MARCH
Early in the gray and red dawn of a March morning in 1883, two wagons
moved slowly out of Boomtown, the two-year-old "giant of the plains." As
the teams drew past the last house, the strangeness of the scene
appealed irresistibly to the newly arrived immigrants. The town lay
behind them on the level, treeless plain like a handful of blocks
pitched upon a russet robe. Its houses were mainly shanties of pine,
one-story in height, while here and there actual tents gleamed in the
half-light with infinite suggestion of America's restless pioneers.
The wind blew fresh and chill from the west. The sun rose swiftly, and
the thin scarf of morning cloud melted away, leaving an illimitable
sweep of sky arching an almost equally majestic plain. There was a
poignant charm in the air--a smell of freshly uncovered sod, a width and
splendor in the view which exalted the movers beyond words.
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