He rose and looked about. Two of the horses lay at rest. The mule
stood munching near. The old frontiersman slept heavily, his face
troubled and upturned to the sky. Wayland noticed the livid tinge of
the lips, the shadows round the eye sockets, the protuberance of veins
on the backs of the old man's hands. The sky seemed to come down lower
as the red twilight darkened; and he could hear not a sound but the
crunch of the grazing mule and the slow drop, drop, drop of the water
seeping from the terra cotta ledge. The stars were beginning to prick
through the indigo darkness. In another hour, it would be bright
enough to travel by starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest,
slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for
the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then
sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick
scurrying on again; then a hand touched him! Wayland sprang to his
feet half asleep. He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the
form faded. The pack mule had flounced up with a cough. A white horse
stood between the banks of the arroyo. There was a steel flash in the
dark, the rip of a quick shot, and the kettle bounced from the ledge
with a jangling spill.

"What's that?" yelled the old frontiersman, jumping for the horses.

Wayland was pumping his repeater into the darkness; but the clatter of
hoof beats down the dry gravel bed answered the question.

"It's the signal for us to get up," answered the Ranger. "I don't mind
the blackguard's bad aim so much as I do the upset of that kettle.
Every drop of water is spilled."

"A'm thinkin' 'twas the kettle they aimed at, and not us, my boy!"

CHAPTER XVI

BITTER WATERS

But for all that the outlaws seemed hard pressed, they succeeded in
keeping ahead. The velvet dark of the night in the arroyo had given
place to a sickly saffron dawn. Where the cut-way widened and lost
itself in an alkali sink, the hoof prints of the fugitives' horses led
out again to the open country of gray torrid earth dotted by sage brush
and greasewood. The yellow sky met the ochre panting earth in a
tremulous heat mist of wavering purple; and against that sky line, a
swirl of dust marked the receding figures of the riders.

"There they go, Wayland! It's a case of who lasts out now! If we can
only keep pushing them ahead, this heat wull do the rest."

The old man shaded his eyes as