et him, unless it was old Mother Hall, who had
been kind to him on those rare occasions when he got out of the
wilderness. Still, it was with regret that he gazed away across the red
valley to the west. Slone had no home. His father and mother had been
lost in the massacre of a wagon train by Indians, and he had been one of
the few saved and brought to Salt Lake. That had happened when he was
ten years old. His life thereafter had been hard, and but for his sturdy
Texas training he might not have survived. The last five years he had
been a horse hunter in the wild uplands of Nevada and Utah.

Slone turned his attention to the pack of supplies. The Stewarts had
divided the flour and the parched corn equally, and unless he was
greatly mistaken they had left him most of the coffee and all of the
salt.

"Now I hold that decent of Bill an' Abe," said Slone, regretfully. "But
I could have got along without it better 'n they could."

Then he swiftly set about kindling a fire and getting a meal. In the
midst of his task a sudden ruddy brightness fell around him. Lin Slone
paused in his work to look up.

The sun had risen over the eastern wall.

"Ah!" he said, and drew a deep breath.

The cold, steely, darkling sweep of desert had been transformed. It was
now a world of red earth and gold rocks and purple sage, with everywhere
the endless straggling green cedars. A breeze whipped in, making the
fire roar softly. The sun felt warm on his cheek. And at the moment he
heard the whistle of his horse.

"Good old Nagger!" he said. "I shore won't have to track you this
mornin'."

Presently he went off into the cedars to find Nagger and the mustang
that he used to carry a pack. Nagger was grazing in a little open patch
among the trees, but the pack horse was missing. Slone seemed to know in
what direction to go to find the trail, for he came upon it very soon.
The pack horse wore hobbles, but he belonged to the class that could
cover a great deal of ground when hobbled. Slone did not expect the
horse to go far, considering that the grass thereabouts was good. But in
a wild-horse country it was not safe to give any horse a chance. The
call of his wild brethren was irresistible. Slone, however, found the
mustang standing quietly in a clump of cedars, and, removing the
hobbles, he mounted and rode back to camp. Nagger caught sight of him
and came at his call.

This horse Nagger appeared as unique in his class as Slone was rare
a