enly it vanished in the ragged blue mass of the Ghost
Mountains. Hare had seen them several times, though never so distinctly.
The purple tips, the bold rock-ribs, the shadowed canyons, so sharp and
clear in the morning light--how impossible to believe that these were
only the deceit of the desert mirage! Yet so they were; even for the
Navajos they were spirit-mountains.

The splintered desert-floor merged into an area of sand. Wolf slowed his
trot, and Silvermane's hoofs sunk deep. Dismounting Hare labored beside
him, and felt the heat steal through his boots and burn the soles of
his feet. Hare plodded onward, stopping once to tie another moccasin on
Wolf's worn paw, this time the left one; and often he pulled the stopper
from the water-bag and cooled his parching lips and throat. The waves of
the sand-dunes were as the waves of the ocean. He did not look backward,
dreading to see what little progress he had made. Ahead were miles on
miles of graceful heaps, swelling mounds, crested ridges, all different,
yet regular and rhythmical, drift on drift, dune on dune, in endless
waves. Wisps of sand were whipped from their summits in white ribbons
and wreaths, and pale clouds of sand shrouded little hollows. The
morning breeze, rising out of the west, approached in a rippling lines
like the crest of an inflowing tide.

Silvermane snorted, lifted his ears and looked westward toward a yellow
pall which swooped up from the desert.

"Sand-storm," said Hare, and calling Wolf he made for the nearest
rock that was large enough to shelter them. The whirling sand-cloud
mushroomed into an enormous desert covering, engulfing the dunes,
obscuring the light. The sunlight failed; the day turned to gloom. Then
an eddying fog of sand and dust enveloped Hare. His last glimpse before
he covered his face with a silk handkerchief was of sheets of sand
streaming past his shelter. The storm came with a low, soft, hissing
roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the
handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face,
but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At
first he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but
presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get
air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping
rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load
on his shoulders had to be continually sh