on the scorching Red Sea job when Moses led a personally conducted
tour through the desert?"

"Dust?" queried the preacher.

"By Harry," cried Wayland, "that mule _does_ smell water."

The little beast had set off for the red rock at a canter. Wayland's
horse followed at a long gallop. The broncho of the old clergyman with
the heavier man lurched to a tired lope. They felt the eddies of dust
as they tore ahead, saw the rainless clouds gathering low and gray far
behind, saw the sun lurid through the whirls of red silt, saw the dust
toss up among the lava beds like snow in a blizzard, then the sand
storm broke, the dry storm of rainless clouds and choking dust flaying
the air in rainless lightning. They gave the ponies blind rein and
shot round the sheltered side of the great red rock into one of those
hidden river beds that trench below the surface of the desert in
cutways and canyons. It was dry.

"The shadow of a great rock in a weary land," quoted the old man
sliding from his horse exhausted.

Foot prints of men and horses punctured the moist silt of the river
bottom. The little mule was kicking and squealing where the red rock
came through the clay bank. Down the terra cotta ledge trickled a tiny
rill not so large as a pencil. Wayland was chopping a deep mud hole in
the river-bottom up which slowly oozed a yellow pool.

"Don't drink that, sir," he ordered.

The old frontiersman was stooping to lave up a handful of the muddy
fluid.

"Don't drink that if you want to get out alive! Wait, I have something
in the pack!"

He threw the cinch ropes free from the mule, pulled out the sacks of
flour and bacon and coffee. "Here we are." He drew out the only can
of beans and punctured the end with his knife.

"If you will satisfy your thirst with that juice, I'll catch the
trickle down the rock while we rest; but you must never drink this
alkali sink stuff."

Leaving the horses nuzzling the muddy pool, the Ranger stuck his jack
knife into a crevice of the ledge and hung the small kettle where it
would catch the drip. Matthews was examining the tracks.

"Not more than an hour or two old, an' A'm thinking, Wayland, we've
fooled them out of water!"

"They'll keep to the shelter of the cutway long as this dust storm
lasts."

Wayland was following down the tracks.

The sun had sunk behind the silver strip of mountain reddening the heat
lakes and the Desert air. Across the mesas, the silt dust and sand