Three men in wide-brimmed hats sit on dark and chestnut horses, stopped in the middle of a dry, open plain. They wear vests, jackets and neckerchiefs, and a coiled rope hangs from one saddle. Low sagebrush covers the ground around them, and the horses cast short shadows on the pale earth.

The whole scene is in a narrow range of sepia and sand tones, like an aged photograph. Thick, textured brushwork in the sky and the dusty ground gives the canvas a tactile surface. Beyond the riders, a faint line of distant hills sits under a broad, hazy sky of drifting clouds.