face. Even as he
drank he felt the puff and whirl of the wind rising; he laughed. He
felt the cool water trickle and settle and pool in the sand hole. Then
he laved his temples and wrists, and laughed softly, and called a low
long tremulous call; that foolish Saxon word he had told her to look up
in the dictionary.

The wind might blow great guns, and wipe out the fugitive trail. He
would go no farther. The wind would attend to the other two men. He
had found water: he had found life. God had played the trick; and he
had not trumped the ace; four of the six outlaws dead, and the last two
hastening to the alkali death across the Desert sands. He drank again,
this time from the cup, sip by sip, slowly, then in deep draughts of
God-given waters.

He didn't thank God in so many words, or in testimony to pass muster at
a prayer meeting; but he paused twice on his way back to the saline
sink to say: "He's on the job. You bet He's on the job!" He spent the
rest of the week nursing the old frontiersman back to life.

PART II

THE MAN HIGHER UP

CHAPTER XVIII

WITHOUT MALICE

The Senator sat in his office with his hat on the back of his head and
a U. S. Geological Survey map spread out on the desk in front of him.
Bat stood sleepily at attention on the other side of the desk with his
hat in his hand. It was a sweltering July afternoon in Smelter City,
the air athrob with the derricks and the trucks and the cranes and the
pulleys and the steam hoists and the cable car tramway run up and down
the face of Coal Hill by natural gravitation. The light was dusky
yellow from the smelter smoke; and loafers round the transcontinental
railroad station across the street chose the shady side of the
building, where they sat swinging their legs from the platform and
aiming tobacco juice with regularity and precision in the exact centre
of the gray dusty road.

The Senator wore a pair of pince nez glasses. He looked up over the
top of them through the yellow sun-light of the open street door.

"Declare, Brydges, the damned rascals are too lazy to brush the flies
off," he observed of the brigade of loafers across the street.

Bat threw a glance over his shoulder at the coterie of loafers, and
brought his drowsy tortoise-shell glance back to the map lying before
the Senator.

"I guess the flies won't bother 'em long as they vote right, Mr.
Senator."

Moyese was slowly turning and turning the thick stub