t the lava for the
ashy silt; then no sound but the swash of saddle leather along trail
marks that cut the crusted silt like tracks in soft snow. The wind had
been flaring a steady torrid white flame. Now it began to come in
puffs and whirls that beat the air to dust of ashes and sent the sand
foaming in the wave lines of a yellow sea. The mule no longer ambled
ahead with ears pointed. He shuffled through the ash with dragging
steps; and the sage brush crackled brittle where the trail led out from
the silt across the baked earth. The heat waves writhed and throbbed
through the atmosphere, a flame through a sieve, with a scorch of
burning from the ground and clouds of dust like smoke.

"I think I'll get off and walk," said Wayland, suiting the action to
the word. "I hope those blackguards are counting on camping at a
spring to-night."

They plodded on for another half hour before Matthews answered.

"Do you think they did it intentionally? A mean, do y' think they
lured us here to get rid of us?"

Wayland paused and thought.

"It's all the same whether they did or not . . . now! What was it you
said about a man chased by the devil setting a good live pace? They
have to find water. They know where water is. We don't! Only safety
is to follow."

"Queer how y' keep imaginin' ye hear wimplin' brooks! When A let
myself go, A keep hearin' the tinkle o' y'r rills back in the
mountains! A keep seein' the blue false water waverin' up to my feet
an' recedin' again! Isn't there a fellow in mythology, Wayland, died
o' thirst in water because when he reached to drink it, it kept
waverin' away?"

"That fellow had travelled in the Desert," answered Wayland.

He aimed his revolver at a green rattlesnake lying under a sage brush.
The sun glinted from the steel barrel. The snake coiled and raised its
head. "See," said Wayland, "the snake takes aim. The light sort of
hypnotizes it. The greenest tenderfoot couldn't miss it."

"How far d' y' call it across?"

"Two to four days straight: eleven to twenty if you take it diagonally.
As I make it, they are steering due West for one of the deep cut ways
to take 'em South under shade."

"Shade would taste pretty good to me, Wayland."

Wayland looked back at his companion. What he thought, he did not say;
but he mounted at once and hastened pace.

"Once we find a spring, we'll travel at night," he said.

A condor rose from the rocks and circled away with slow l