e better than one
made by the goats for which the pass was named. Behind, Molly's mount
followed suit, blowing at the dust. Sandy patted the mare's neck and
dismounted.

"It's late, ain't it?" asked Molly. "Will we miss that train?"

"There's others," answered Sandy. "Or, if there ain't any mo' ter-night,
we'll hire us a car an' keep movin'. Yo're sure game, Molly;" he added
admiringly, "you must be clean tuckered out."

She shook her head with an attempt at a smile.

"I'll be glad when we start goin' down, fer a change," she admitted,
looking into the gloomy trough of the canyon through which the night wind
soughed.

"I'll tighten up yore cinches," said Sandy. "Worst of the climb's jest
ahead. Then we start to drop down t'other side. You don't have to git
off. Trail's bound to be better once we git atop the mesa and start
down. Mesa's right narrer, as I remember. T'other side's away from the
weather. There's a canyon with oak trees an' a stream of water." He
tugged at the leathers, his knee against the bay's ribs as she grunted.

"You ain't much furtheh to go, li'l' hawss," he chatted on. "Downhill
all the way soon an' then a drink to wash out yore mouth an' the best
feed in Caroca fo' the pair of you."

"Gits dark mighty quick up here," said the girl.

A great cloud was ballooning above them, like a dirigible that had lost
buoyancy and was bumping along the mesa ridge. Its belly was black, its
western side ruddy in the sunset. Sandy viewed it apprehensively. In
superficial survey the mesa seemed much like the stranded carcass of a
mastodonic creature left behind when the waters departed from these
inland seas. A hard skeleton of igneous rock, with clayey soil for
flesh, riven and seamed and pitted, crumbling and dusty in the sun, ever
disintegrating with wind and water and frost. Under a rain the trail was
slimy as a whale's back. The cloud was soggy with moisture. Bursting, it
would send torrents roaring down every ravine, wash out weathered masses
of earth, sweep all before it as it gathered forces and rushed out on
the desert, leaving the main canyons carved a little richer, the surface
of the soil on the sink a little deeper, against the time when men
should control these storm waters or bring the precious fluid up from
underground reservoirs and make the desert blossom like the rose.

Where Molly and Sandy rode they were exposed to the first drench of a
cloud-burst. Deeper in the pass, where the flood w