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Somewhere over
there in the desert lived Indians. At this point Wildfire abandoned the trail
he had followed for many days and cut out more to the north. It took all the
morning hours to climb three great steps and benches that led up to the summit
of a mesa, vast in extent. It turned out to be a sandy waste. The wind rose
and everywhere were moving sheets of sand, and in the distance circular yellow
dust-devils, rising high like waterspouts, and back down in the sun-scorched
valley a sandstorm moved along majestically, burying the desert in its yellow
pall.
Then two more days of sand and another day of a slowly rising ground growing
from bare to gray and gray to green, and then to the purple of sage and
cedar--these three grinding days were toiled out with only one water-hole.
And Wildfire was lame and in distress and Nagger was growing gaunt and showing
strain; and Slone, haggard and black and worn, plodded miles and miles on foot
to save his horse.
Slone felt that it would be futile to put the chase to a test of speed.


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