ed and lightly thanked him in Spanish. The flash of mood
was in direct contrast to the appealing, passionate, and tragic states
in which he had successively viewed her; and it gave him a vivid
impression of what vivacity and charm she might possess under happy
conditions. He was about to start when he observed that Ladd had
halted and was peering ahead in evident caution. Mercedes' horse began
to stamp impatiently, raised his ears and head, and acted as if he was
about to neigh.

A warning "hist!" from Ladd bade Dick to put a quieting hand on the
horse. Lash came noiselessly forward to join his companion. The two
then listened and watched.

An uneasy yet thrilling stir ran through Gale's veins. This scene was
not fancy. These men of the ranges had heard or seen or scented
danger. It was all real, as tangible and sure as the touch of
Mercedes's hand upon his arm. Probably for her the night had terrors
beyond Gale's power to comprehend. He looked down into the desert, and
would have felt no surprise at anything hidden away among the bristling
cactus, the dark, winding arroyos, the shadowed rocks with their
moonlit tips, the ragged plain leading to the black bold mountains.
The wind appeared to blow softly, with an almost imperceptible moan,
over the desert. That was a new sound to Gale. But he heard nothing
more.

Presently Lash went to the rear and Ladd started ahead. The progress
now, however, was considerably slower, not owing to a road--for that
became better--but probably owing to caution exercised by the cowboy
guide. At the end of a half hour this marked deliberation changed, and
the horses followed Ladd's at a gait that put Gale to his best
walking-paces.

Meanwhile the moon soared high above the black corrugated peaks. The
gray, the gloom, the shadow whitened. The clearing of the dark
foreground appeared to lift a distant veil and show endless aisles of
desert reaching down between dim horizon-bounding ranges.

Gale gazed abroad, knowing that as this night was the first time for
him to awake to consciousness of a vague, wonderful other self, so it
was one wherein he began to be aware of an encroaching presence of
physical things--the immensity of the star-studded sky, the soaring
moon, the bleak, mysterious mountains, and limitless slope, and plain,
and ridge, and valley. These things in all their magnificence had not
been unnoticed by him before; only now they spoke a different meaning.
A vo