ave life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and
Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night,
carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it
but a cupful among his animals, and the second night reached his
calculated 'dobe-hole. The animals rolled luxuriously in the brown,
dungy mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shade
at the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of the
mesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whose
loose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on the
other side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among the
mesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluid
in his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, and flapped twenty
yards away, and sat watching until he was gone into the desert, when
they clouded back again round their carrion.

This day was over ground yellow and hard with dearth, until afternoon
brought a footing of sifting sand heavy to travel in. He had plenty of
time for thinking. His ease after the first snapping from his promise
had changed to an eagerness to come unawares and catch the man in the
steeple-hat. Till that there could be no proofs. Genesmere had along the
road nearly emptied his second canteen of its brown-amber drink, wetting
the beasts' tongues more than his own. The neighborhood of the next
'dobe-hole might be known by the three miles of cactus you went through
before coming on it, a wide-set plantation of the yucca. The posted
plants deployed over the plain in strange extended order like legions
and legions of figures, each shock-head of spears bunched bristling at
the top of its lank, scaly stalk, and out of that stuck the
blossom-pole, a pigtail on end, with its knot of bell-flowers seeded to
pods ten feet in the air. Genesmere's horse started and nearly threw
him, but it was only a young calf lying for shade by a yucca. Genesmere
could tell from its unlicked hide that the mother had gone to hunt
water, and been away for some time. This unseasonable waif made a try at
running away, but fell in a heap, and lay as man and mules passed on.
Presently he passed a sentinel cow. She stood among the thorns guarding
the calves of her sisters till they should return from getting their
water. The desert cattle learn this shift, and the sentinel now, at the
stranger's approach, lowered her head, and with a feeb