ns. Hare saw in mind Naab and his sons,
and the Navajos sweeping in pursuit to save him from the rustlers.

But the future must take care of itself, and he addressed all the
faculties at his command to cool consideration of the present. The strip
of sand under the Blue Star had to be crossed at night--a feat
which even the Navajos did not have to their credit. Yet Hare had no
shrinking; he had no doubt; he must go on. As he had been drawn to
the Painted Desert by a voiceless call, so now he was urged forward by
something nameless.

In the blackness of the night it seemed as if he were riding through a
vaulted hall swept by a current of air. The night had turned cold, the
stars had brightened icily, the rumble of the river had died away when
Bolly's ringing trot suddenly changed to a noiseless floundering walk.
She had come upon the sand. Hare saw the Blue Star in the cliff, and
once more loosed the rein on Bolly's neck. She stopped and champed her
bit, and turned her black head to him as if to intimate that she wanted
the guidance of a sure arm. But as it was not forthcoming she stepped
onward into the yielding sand.

With hands resting idly on the pommel Hare sat at ease in the saddle.
The billowy dunes reflected the pale starlight and fell away from him to
darken in obscurity. So long as the Blue Star remained in sight he kept
his sense of direction; when it had disappeared he felt himself lost.
Bolly's course seemed as crooked as the jagged outline of the cliffs.
She climbed straight up little knolls, descended them at an angle,
turned sharply at wind-washed gullies, made winding detours, zigzagged
levels that shone like a polished floor; and at last (so it seemed to
Hare) she doubled back on her trail. The black cliff receded over the
waves of sand; the stars changed positions, travelled round in the blue
dome, and the few that he knew finally sank below the horizon. Bolly
never lagged; she was like the homeward-bound horse, indifferent to
direction because sure of it, eager to finish the journey because now
it was short. Hare was glad though not surprised when she snorted and
cracked her iron-shod hoof on a stone at the edge of the sand. He smiled
with tightening lips as he rode into the shadow of a rock which he
recognized. Bolly had crossed the treacherous belt of dunes and washes
and had struck the trail on the other side.

The long level of wind-carved rocks under the cliffs, the ridges of the
desert, the m