he silvery sage, white poppy and yucca, and yellow and
scarlet cactus bloom which glistened in the slanting rays of the
afternoon sun and the intense radiation of heat in which was mirrored
the distant mirage; transforming the desert into wonderful lakes of
limpid waters that faded in turn on the ever receding horizon.

Below them numerous Indian encampments of some half-wild hill tribe
straggled along the banks of the almost dry stream which wound through
the valley until lost in the thirsty sands of the desert beyond.

"'Tis the very spot, _Capitan_--the place of the skull!" ejaculated
Jose, the first to break the silence. "See--yonder it lies just as we
left it!" and he pointed toward the foot of the _mesa_ where a spring
trickled from the rock, a short distance from which lay a human skull
bleached white by long exposure to the sun.

Instinctively the Captain's thoughts reverted to the incidents of the
previous year when he lay in the desert sick unto death with fever and
his horse, Starlight, had stood over his prostrate body and fought the
wolves and vultures for a whole day and night until Jose returned with
help from the Indian _pueblo_, La Guna. Involuntarily his hand slipped
caressingly to the animal's neck, a chestnut with four white feet and a
white mane and tail that swept the ground and a forelock that hung to
his nostrils, concealing the star on his forehead; a magnificent animal,
lithe and graceful as a lady's silken scarf, untiring and enduring as a
Damascus blade. A horse that comes but once during twenty generations of
Spanish-Arabian stock, and then is rare, and which, through some trick
of nature or reversion, blossoms forth in all the beauty of an original
type, taking upon himself the color and markings of some shy, wild-eyed
dam, the pride of the Bedouin tribe and is known as the "Pearl of the
Desert." The type of horse that bore Alexander and Jenghis Khan and the
Prophet's War Chieftains to victory. As a colt he had escaped the
_rodeo_. No mark of the branding-irons scarred his shoulder or thin
transparent flanks. Again the Captain's thoughts traveled backward and
he beheld a band of wild horses driven past him in review by a troup of
Mexican _vaqueros_, and the beautiful chestnut stallion emerge from the
cloud of dust on their rim and tossing his great white mane in the
breeze, neigh loudly and defiantly as he swept by lithe and supple of
limb.

"Bring me that horse!" he had cried.

"That