our place; then Miguel and Bud, and after that
Weary and Happy. Pink, you go and bed down in the shade somewhere and go
to sleep--and quit worrying over last night. Nobody could have done
any better than you did. It was just one put over on the bunch, and you
happened to be the particular goat, that's all.

"Now, if one of us waves his hat over his head, all of you but Happy and
Bud and Pink come up with your rifles and your ropes, because we'll have
some horses sighted. If we wave from side to side, like this, about even
with our belts, you boys want to look out for trouble. So one of you
keep an eye on us all the time we're up there. We'll be up outa reach
of any trouble ourselves, if I remember that little pinnacle right."
He hung the strap that held the leather case of the glasses over one
shoulder, picked up his rifle and his rope and started off, with Andy
similarly equipped coming close behind him.

The mesa, when they reached the pinnacle and looked down over the wide
expanse of it, glimmered like clear, running water with the heat waves
that rose from the sand. Away to the southward a scattered band of sheep
showed in a mirage that made them look long-legged as camels and half
convinced them both that they were seeing the lost horses, until the
vision changed and shrunk the moving objects to mere dots upon the mesa.

Often before they had watched the fantastic air-pictures of the desert
mirage, and they knew well enough that what they saw might be one mile
away or twenty. But unless the atmospheric conditions happened to be
just right, what was pictured in the air could not be depended upon
to portray truthfully what was reflected. They sat there and saw the
animals suddenly grow clearly defined and very close, and discovered at
last that they were sheep, and that a man was walking beside the flock;
and even while they watched it and wondered if the sheep were really
as close as they seemed, the vision slowly faded into blank, wavery
distance and the mesa lay empty and quivering under the sun.

"Fine chance we've got of locating anything," Andy grumbled, "if it's
going to be miragy all day. We could run our fool heads off trying to
get up to a bunch that would puff out into nothing. Makes a fellow think
of the stories they tell about old prospectors going crazy trying to
find mirage water-holes. I'm glad we didn't get hung up at a dry camp,
Luck. Yuh realize what that would be like?"

"Oh, I may have some f