nd round by an unbroken
sky line, had been the first of the human race to grasp the idea of the
Oneness of God. And was it not the Desert prophets, who had preached a
God relentless as he was merciful; and the retribution that was fire?
Well, Wayland ruminated, who should say that they were wrong? If the
God who created the Desert, was the God of life; but there, his thought
had been broken by coming on the withered carcass beside the yellow
pool.

"They can't keep going on in this heat! We'll run 'em down if we can
only keep going," Wayland had said; as they set out again in the
blistering wind; but to his dying day, he will never forget the
traverse of the Desert in that mid-day sun. To his dying day he will
never see the spectrum colors of white light split by a prism, or the
spectrum colors of a child's soap bubble, without living over the
tortures of that afternoon, for the air, whipped to dust by the
hurricane wind, acted as a prism splitting the white flame of light to
lurid reds and oranges and yellows and violets.

Now, on this second morning before the stars had faded to the orange
sunrise coming up through the lavender air in a half fan, the heat had
thrown riders and horses in a sweltering sweat; and the nagging wind
had begun driving ash dust in eyes and skin like pepper on a raw sore.
Matthews' ruddy face had turned livid; his blood-shot eyes were dark
ringed. The horses travelled with heads hung low. Spite of the sun,
it was a cloudy sky, but whether rain clouds or dust clouds, they could
not tell. Towards noon, they could see against the purple mountains
the red tinged clouds fraying out to a fringe that swept the sky.

"A thought it never rained in the Desert in summer, Wayland?"

"It doesn't."

"What's that ahead?"

"Rain; but if you look again, you'll see it doesn't reach the sky line!
It's sucked up and evaporated before it hits the dust. . . ."

Towards the middle of the afternoon, the horses were resting in the
shade of a reddish butte. Both men had dismounted. Wayland did not
notice what was happening till he glanced where the blue shadow of the
rock met the wavering glare of the sand. The old man had stooped to
one knee and had twice laved his hand down to the wavering margin of
blue light and bluer shadows.

"Fooled you again, did it?' asked the Ranger, throwing the saddle from
his own pony, strapping the cased rifle to his shoulder and carrying
the hatchet in the crook of