auses the blood to pound through one's veins, and an
unexplainable rapture seizes man's spirits.

Jo's black mare, Babe, had not been ridden for weeks, and every
greasewood bush that she saw became in the weird light of sunrise a
grotesque goblin ready to spring at her and devour her whole. At
least, so she pretended, and as her natural weapon of defense lay in
flight, she kept Hiram Hooker busy holding her down to a fast gallop.

The low-hanging tapaderos flapped loosely. Hiram's borrowed
silver-mounted spurs--a reminder of Tom Gulick's cow-punching days in
Utah--jingled merrily. The heavy six-gun at his hip flopped against
the silver-rimmed cantle of Jo's fifty-pound saddle. The smells of the
morning were sweet. Away over the vast expanse of bronze greasewood,
far-flung buttes caught the early rays of the sun and took on something
of the likeness of a solar spectrum, purple at their bases, the colors
ranging upward through blues and greens and yellows to a spun-gold
glitter at their summits. Jack rabbits loped away through the brush.
Now and then a coyote, ears pricked up, trotted along, his tail
dragging. Tecolote, the little desert owl, came from his hole and sat
on the pile of dirt beside it, while his wife peeked out with her round
head just above the ground and gave silent approval to her lord and
master's querulous criticism of the rider.

Life was good--life was glorious. Life was love! The poetic heart of
the man from Wild-cat Hill sang ceaselessly. He was away on his
romantic quest to serve the most splendid girl a man had ever loved!

As the morning progressed and the sun climbed higher and higher, Babe
bore him through many camps, both large and small. At each he drew
rein and made inquiry after an old prospector called Basil Filer, who
drove six burros. No one had seen such a man, however, and Hiram
continued on toward the north until noon. Then he stopped for dinner
and to feed and rest the mare at Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp
Number Two. They had come twenty-one miles that morning, he learned at
dinner in the huge dining tent; and when he started out again he held
Babe in, because she was soft for want of exercise.

On and on they traveled, nevertheless, Hiram making inquiry at every
camp. At last, thirty miles from Ragtown, he got word of the
prospector. A camp freighter who traveled to the north for supplies
from Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Three had seen such a man