heading as straight as might be
for the bridge. They met no one; they saw scarcely a light in any of the
windows that they passed. A chill wind crept up the river so that they
buttoned their coats when the hoofbeats of the horses sounded hollow on
the bridge. Out through the lane that leads to Atrisco, which slept
in the stolid blackness of low adobe houses with flat roofs and tiny
windows, they rode at a trot. Dogs barked, ran but to the road and
barked again, ran back to the adobe huts and kept on barking. In one
field some loose horses, seeing so many of their kind in the lane,
galloped up to the fence and stood there snorting. These were still in
their colthood, however, and the saddle-horses merely flicked ears in
their direction and gave them no more heed.

"I'm glad you're sure of the country, up here on top," Luck said to
Applehead when they had climbed, by the twisting, sandy trail, to the
sand dunes that lay on the edge of the mesa and stretched vaguely away
under the stars. To the rim-rook line that separated this first mesa
from the higher one beyond, Luck himself knew the sand-hills well.
But beyond the broken line of hills off to the northwest he had never
gone--and there lay the territory that belongs to the Navajos, who are
a tricky tribe and do not love the white people who buy their rugs and
blankets and, so claim the Navajos, steal their cattle and their horses
as well.

At the rim of lava rock they made a dry camp and lay down in what
comfort they could achieve, to doze and wait for daylight so that they
could pick up the trail of the red automobile.

CHAPTER XI. ALL THIS WAR-TALK ABOUT INJUNS

Over his second cup of coffee the pale eyes of Big Medicine goggled
thoughtfully at the forbidding wall of lava rock that stretched before
them as far as he could see to left or right. There were places here and
there where he believed that a man could climb to the top with the aid
of his hands as well as his feet, but for the horses he was extremely
skeptical; and as for a certain big red automobile.... His eyes swung
from the brown rampart and rested grievedly upon the impassive face of
Luck, who was just then reaching forward to spear another slice of bacon
from the frying pan.

"Kinda looks to me, by cripes, as if we'd come to the end uh the trail,"
he observed in his usual full-lunged bellow, as though he had all his
life been accustomed to pitching his voice above some unending clamor.
"Yuh go