presently Shefford caught a pair of wondering dark eyes peeping at him.

"They're good spenders, but slow," said Withers. "The Navajos are
careful and cautious. That's why they're rich. This squaw, Yan As Pa,
has flocks of sheep and more mustangs than she knows about."

"Mustangs. So that's what you call the ponies?" replied Shefford.

"Yep. They're mustangs, and mostly wild as jack-rabbits."

Shefford strolled outside and made the acquaintance of Withers's helper,
a Mormon named Whisner. He was a stockily built man past maturity, and
his sun-blistered face and watery eyes told of the open desert. He was
engaged in weighing sacks of wool brought in by the Indians. Near by
stood a framework of poles from which an immense bag was suspended. From
the top of this bag protruded the head and shoulders of an Indian who
appeared to be stamping and packing wool with his feet. He grinned at
the curious Shefford. But Shefford was more interested in the Mormon. So
far as he knew, Whisner was the first man of that creed he had ever met,
and he could scarcely hide his eagerness. Venters's stories had been
of a long-past generation of Mormons, fanatical, ruthless, and
unchangeable. Shefford did not expect to meet Mormons of this kind.
But any man of that religion would have interested him. Besides this,
Whisner seemed to bring him closer to that wild secret canyon he had
come West to find. Shefford was somewhat amazed and discomfited to have
his polite and friendly overtures repulsed. Whisner might have been an
Indian. He was cold, incommunicative, aloof; and there was something
about him that made the sensitive Shefford feel his presence was
resented.

Presently Shefford strolled on to the corral, which was full of shaggy
mustangs. They snorted and kicked at him. He had a half-formed wish that
he would never be called upon to ride one of those wild brutes, and then
he found himself thinking that he would ride one of them, and after a
while any of them. Shefford did not understand himself, but he fought
his natural instinctive reluctance to meet obstacles, peril, suffering.

He traced the white-bordered little stream that made the pool in the
corral, and when he came to where it oozed out of the sand under the
bluff he decided that was not the spring which had made Kayenta famous.
Presently down below the trading-post he saw a trough from which burros
were drinking. Here he found the spring, a deep well of eddying water
walled i