The Loom of Lies by W. C. Tuttle

It was an August evening in the valley of the Bunch Grass, and in a year so dry that the poplars and cottonwoods along the Lost Horse River had already turned yellow, and the leaves of the willows were a crackling carpet to the tread of thirsty stock.

No rain had come to the valley since the last Chinook winds had swept the winter snows, and the river was merely a shallow watercourse of evil-smelling fluid. The rolling hills, which extended back to the encircling mountains, were as brown as burlap, and the range cattle were dusty of hide, thin of flank and red-eyed from the heat.