in' all the way, but a good
fast walk ought to put us half way, by daylight, an' then we can hit her
up a little better." The moon swung higher and the light increased
somewhat, but at best it was poor enough, serving only to bring out the
general outlines of the trail and the bolder contour of the coulee's rim.
No breath of the wind stirred the air that was cold, with a dank, clammy
coldness--like the dead air of a cistern. As she rode, the girl noticed
the absence of its buoyant tang. The horses' hoofs rang hollow and thin
on the hard rock of the coulee bed, and even the frenzied yapping of a
pack of coyotes, sounded uncanny and far away. Between these sounds the
stillness seemed oppressive--charged with a nameless feeling of
unwholesome portent. "It is the evil spell of the bad lands," thought
the girl, and shuddered.

Dawn broke with the moon still high above the western skyline. The sides
of the coulee had flattened and they traversed a country of low-lying
ridges and undulating rock-basins. As the yellow rim of the sun showed
above the crest of a far-off ridge, their ears caught the muffled roar of
wind. From the elevation of a low hill the four gazed toward the west
where a low-hung dust-cloud, lowering, ominous, mounted higher and higher
as the roar of the wind increased. The air about them remained
motionless--dead. Suddenly it trembled, swirled, and rushed forward to
meet the oncoming dust-cloud as though drawn toward it by the suck of a
mighty vortex.

"Dat better we gon' for hont de hole. Dat dust sto'm she raise hell."

"Hole up, nothin'!" cried the Texan; "How are we goin' to hole up--four
of us an' five horses, on a pint of water an' three cans of tomatoes?
When that storm hits it's goin' to be hot. We've just naturally got to
make that water-hole! Come on, ride like the devil before she hits,
because we're goin' to slack up considerable, directly."

The cowboy led the way and the others followed, urging their horses at
top speed. The air was still cool, and as she rode, Alice glanced over
her shoulder toward the dust cloud, nearer now, by many miles. The roar
of the wind increased in volume. "It's like the roar of the falls at
Niagara," she thought, and spurred her horse close beside the Texan's.

"Only seventeen or eighteen miles," she heard him say, as her horse drew
abreast. "The wind's almost at our back, an' that'll help some." He
jerked the silk scarf from his neck and extended