ust Naab reseated himself and took up the reins;
the ascent proceeded.

But it proceeded leisurely, with more frequent rests. At the end of an
hour the horses toiled over the last rise to the summit and entered a
level forest of cedars; in another hour they were descending gradually.

"Here we are at the tanks," said Naab.

Hare saw that they had come up with the other wagons. George Naab was
leading a team down a rocky declivity to a pool of yellow water. The
other boys were unharnessing and unsaddling.

"About three," said Naab, looking at the sun. "We're in good time. Jack,
get out and stretch yourself. We camp here. There's the Coconina Trail
where the Navajos go in after deer."

It was not a pretty spot, this little rock-strewn glade where the white
hard trail forked with the road. The yellow water with its green scum
made Hare sick. The horses drank with loud gulps. Naab and his sons
drank of it. The women filled a pail and portioned it out in basins and
washed their faces and hands with evident pleasure. Dave Naab whistled
as he wielded an axe vigorously on a cedar. It came home to Hare that
the tension of the past night and morning had relaxed. Whether to
attribute that fact to the distance from White Sage or to the arrival
at the water-hole he could not determine. But the certainty was shown
in August's cheerful talk to the horses as he slipped bags of grain over
their noses, and in the subdued laughter of the women. Hare sent up an
unspoken thanksgiving that these good Mormons had apparently escaped
from the dangers incurred for his sake. He sat with his back to a cedar
and watched the kindling of fires, the deft manipulating of biscuit
dough in a basin, and the steaming of pots. The generous meal was spread
on a canvas cloth, around which men and women sat cross-legged, after
the fashion of Indians. Hare found it hard to adapt his long legs to the
posture, and he wondered how these men, whose legs were longer than his,
could sit so easily. It was the crown of a cheerful dinner after hours
of anxiety and abstinence to have Snap Naab speak civilly to him, and to
see him bow his head meekly as his father asked the blessing. Snap ate
as though he had utterly forgotten that he had recently killed a man; to
hear the others talk to him one would suppose that they had forgotten it
also.

All had finished eating, except Snap and Dave Naab, when one of the
mustangs neighed shrilly. Hare would not have noticed it