sides, a very poor horseman, while Conniston had ridden a great
deal. To-day his horse--a spirited colt newly broken--was not content
to go straight ahead as Hapgood would have had him, but danced back
and forth across the road, shied at every conceivable opportunity,
threatening constantly to unseat his rider, and jerked at the
restraining, tight-gathered reins until Hapgood's arms ached.

The sun soon drove away the early mists and beat down upon the two men
mercilessly from a blazingly hot sky. Nowhere was there any shade
except the tiny pools of shadow at the roots of the scrub brush. The
heat, the dry air shimmering over the glowing sands, abetted by the
many high-balls of yesterday, soon engendered a scorching thirst, and
as mile after mile of the treeless desert slipped behind they found no
water. Over and over Hapgood was tempted to turn back. He felt that
his shoulders, from which he had removed his coat, were blistering
under the sharp rays of the sun. At every swinging stride his horse
made he felt the skin being rubbed off of his legs where they rubbed
against the saddle leather. His soft hands were cut by the reins, he
was sore from the tips of his fingers to the soles of his feet. But as
each fresh temptation assailed him a glance at Conniston, riding a few
paces ahead, made him pull himself together. For some day the old man
would relent, and then Roger Hapgood would see that for every agonized
mile now he would be amply repaid.

And no water would they find until Indian Creek was thirty miles
behind them unless they turned from their way and rode a couple of
miles to the westward where the straggling stream crawled through the
sand. It was as well that they did not know, for the stream, like many
of its kind in the dry parts of the West, ran for the greater part of
its course underground, showing only here and there in a pool, where,
beneath the sand, there was the hard-pan through which the water could
not seep.

They had left the town behind them at a lope. Now they rode at a walk,
curbing their horses' impatience with tight-drawn reins. They had
thought to have reached the brown hills and shade before the day's
heat was upon them. But now it was already intense, stifling, awaking
from its light doze almost as the sun rolled upward across the low
horizon.

And now the temptation upon Roger Hapgood, urging him to turn
back--back toward the little town, hateful yesterday, but spelling now
at least t