some where on the
way. If we can tire them out before they can reach their cache, we've
got 'em."

Once, where the way led between flanking foot hills, the tracks dipped
into a mountain stream and didn't come up on the other side. "Hoh!"
commented the old man, "that's easy; you'll take the right and A'll
take the left; and where the hills lift up ahead, A'm thinking you'll
find the tracks plain."

All the same, Wayland noticed Matthews frequently moistening his
parched lips; and the lakes of light ahead lay a wavering looming veil.
A mile farther on, the ripped punk of a dead pinon betrayed the passing
of the fugitives. When Wayland dismounted to examine the marks, he
stepped on a small cactus. They picked up a trail that led over rocky
mesas and dipped suddenly into the deep dug-way of a dry gravel bed.
The sand walls of the dead stream afforded shelter from the sun, and
the two riders spurred their bronchos to a canter led by the pack mule.
The sand banks spread, widened, opened; and the mule stopped, both ears
pointing forward like a hunting dog. They rode forward to find
themselves looking down on an ocean of light, shimmering orange colored
light, with the mountains trembling on the far sky line silver strips
necked by purple and opal. The old frontiersman mowed the sweat from
his brows and gazed from under shade of his level hand.

"Sun's like a shower o' red hot arrows," he said.

The sand lay fine as sifted ashes dotted with clumps of bluish-green
sage brush and greasewood. A bleached ox-skull focussed the light with
a glaze that stabbed vision. The ashy earth, the dusty sage brush, the
orange sand hills, the silver strip on the far sky line flecked by the
purple and opal loomed and wavered and writhed in a white flame.

"Do you see the bluish shade to the shadows?" asked Wayland.

The old man was still shading his eyes from the white heat. "Do A see
mountains, Wayland?"

"Certainly, you do! Did you think the Desert flat as the sea?"

"That's just it! If A see mountains, then A see water too! It keeps
wavering."

"By which you may know _it isn't water_," warned Wayland.

"Wayland, A' don't believe you!"

He had dismounted as he spoke and proceeded down the yellow sands to a
pit at the foot of the rolling slope. Wayland saw him halt, again
shade his eyes from the sun glare, and stoop. On his knees, he looked
again and rose. He came up the slope shaking his head. "Y'd swear it
was w