desert--to strike
first and hard.

"Zeke, hitch up a team," said August Naab. "No--wait a moment. Here
comes Piute. Let's hear what he has to say."

Piute appeared on the zigzag cliff-trail, driving a burro at dangerous
speed.

"He's sighted Silvermane and the rustlers," suggested George, as the
shepherd approached.

Naab translated the excited Indian's mingling of Navajo and
Piute languages to mean just what George had said. "Snap ahead of
riders--Silvermane far, far ahead of Snap--running fast--damn!"

"Mescal's pushing him hard to make the sand-strip," said George.

"Piute--three fires to-night--Lookout Point!" This order meant the
execution of August Naab's hurry-signal for the Navajos, and after he
had given it, he waved the Indian toward the cliff, and lapsed into a
silence which no one dared to break.

Naab consigned the bodies of the rustlers to the famous cemetery under
the red wall. He laid Dene in grave thirty-one. It was the grave that
the outlaw had promised as the last resting-place of Dene's spy. Chance
and Culver he buried together. It was noteworthy that no Mormon rites
were conferred on Culver, once a Mormon in good standing, nor were any
prayers spoken over the open graves.

What did August Naab intend to do? That was the question in Hare's mind
as he left the house. It was a silent day, warm as summer, though the
sun was overcast with gray clouds; the birds were quiet in the trees;
there was no bray of burro or clarion-call of peacock, even the hum of
the river had fallen into silence. Hare wandered over the farm and down
the red lane, brooding over the issue. Naab's few words had been full
of meaning; the cold gloom so foreign to his nature, had been even more
impressive. His had been the revolt of the meek. The gentle, the loving,
the administering, the spiritual uses of his life had failed.

Hare recalled what the desert had done to his own nature, how it had
bred in him its impulse to fight, to resist, to survive. If he, a
stranger of a few years, could be moulded in the flaming furnace of
its fiery life, what then must be the cast of August Naab, born on the
desert, and sleeping five nights out of seven on the sands for sixty
years?

The desert! Hare trembled as he grasped all its meaning. Then he slowly
resolved that meaning. There were the measureless distances to narrow
the eye and teach restraint; the untrodden trails, the shifting sands,
the thorny brakes, the broken lava to pi