, with set jaw.

"Yes, Thorne. It's Rojas and a dozen men or more," replied Gale, and
he looked up at Mercedes.

She was transformed. She might have been a medieval princess embodying
all the Spanish power and passion of that time, breathing revenge,
hate, unquenchable spirit of fire. If her beauty had been wonderful in
her helpless and appealing moments, now, when she looked back
white-faced and flame-eyed, it was transcendant.

Gale drew a long, deep breath. The mood which had presaged pursuit,
strife, blood on this somber desert, returned to him tenfold. He saw
Thorne's face corded by black veins, and his teeth exposed like those
of a snarling wolf. These rangers, who had coolly risked death many
times, and had dealt it often, were white as no fear or pain could have
made them. Then, on the moment, Yaqui raised his hand, not clenched or
doubled tight, but curled rigid like an eagle's claw; and he shook it
in a strange, slow gesture which was menacing and terrible.

It was the woman that called to the depths of these men. And their
passion to kill and to save was surpassed only by the wild hate which
was yet love, the unfathomable emotion of a peon slave. Gale marveled
at it, while he felt his whole being cold and tense, as he turned once
more to follow in the tracks of his leaders. The fight predicted by
Belding was at hand. What a fight that must be! Rojas was traveling
light and fast. He was gaining. He had bought his men with gold, with
extravagant promises, perhaps with offers of the body and blood of an
aristocrat hateful to their kind. Lastly, there was the wild, desolate
environment, a tortured wilderness of jagged lava and poisoned choya, a
lonely, fierce, and repellant world, a red stage most somberly and
fittingly colored for a supreme struggle between men.

Yaqui looked back no more. Mercedes looked back no more. But the
others looked, and the time came when Gale saw the creeping line of
pursuers with naked eyes.

A level line above marked the rim of the plateau. Sand began to show
in the little lava pits. On and upward toiled the cavalcade, still
very slowly advancing. At last Yaqui reached the rim. He stood with
his hand on Blanco Diablo; and both were silhouetted against the sky.
That was the outlook for a Yaqui. And his great horse, dazzlingly
white in the sunlight, with head wildly and proudly erect, mane and
tail flying in the wind, made a magnificent picture. The others t