This time, Wayland did not laugh. Had not the wires been out of order since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant place to a Nation's alarm?

They ate their bannocks—'Rocky Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the slap-jacks—in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.

"What's that, Wayland?"

"Only the snow slides loosened by the noon-thaw slithering down the Pass of Holy Cross;" and somehow, he could not but think of what she had said . . . the law of the snow flake sculpturing the rocks.

The horses cropped audibly over the grasses—waiting. The little mule looked back—also waiting. A whelming impulse, part of the spirit to drink of her inspiration, part of the flesh to drink of her touch—came over him to ride down to the ranch house, the MacDonald ranch house, to see her—just once before setting out on the Long Trail.

"Well," he said; "which way, Mr. Matthews?"

The old Britisher moved thoughtfully towards his broncho.

"We'll try y'r sheriff—at least, we'll try him first."

And again the Ranger laughed.

"Don't laugh, man! D' y' know what it means when men are driven outside the line of law?"

The horses waded in midstream and reached down drinking, champing on their bits.

"Well—what does it mean?"

He saw the blue of the mountain stream swirl and whirl and eddy over the sun-dyed pebbles, singing the law of the far mountain snows.

"God knows," answered the old man slowly. "It means disrupture. We slew our kings in olden times; but ye are a many headed king in this land! It means—perhaps, ye call it Anarchy to-day."

The yellow noon-day light sifted through the cottonwoods jewel-spangled on the crystal blue River. The Ranger always knew the character of the mountains from the River: silty and milky-blue from glaciers; crystal and green-blue from the snow. And they rode away up the Valley from the ranch houses towards the Pass, out beyond the bounds of the National Forests with the trees marked two notches and one blaze; gradually up the narrowing trail fringed by the shiny laurel bushes; with the mountains closing closer and the spiced balsam odor raining on the air a sifted gold dust of sunlight. At intervals, came the dull rumble of the snow slide, the far reverberation, the echo of the law of the snow flake rolling away the stone; the smash of the great law drama, the titans behind the mountains.

It was one of those frequent mountain formations where a Valley seems to terminate in a blank wall. You turn a buttress of rock, and you find the sheer wall opening before you in a trail that climbs to a notch on the sky line between forested flanks. The notch of blue is a Pass.

"Anyway, Mr. Matthews, we are splitting the air, now! We are doing more than sawing air."

They had put their horses to a sharp trot along the trail winding up the River. The water was gurgling over the polished pebbles with little leaps and glints of fire. Presently, the mountains had closed behind them. The River was tumbling with noisy rush in a succession of cascades, and the trail wound back from the rocky bank through circular flats or what were locally known as "bottoms."

"Sheriff live this way?" shouted Matthews; for the roar of the little stream filled the canyon.

"Has a ranch at the foot of the Pass."

"It won't be wasting time, anyway," said the old Britisher.

Again, Wayland smiled. If it would not be wasting time; then, they were already in pursuit of the outlaws. What was it in the insolent look of the Senator's ranch hand that had suddenly dashed the doughty Briton's reverence for the instrument of the law?

A barb wire fence tacked to spindly cottonwood trees marked the line of an irregular homestead; and the Ranger swung into a gate extemporized from barb wire on two adjustable posts. Behind the gate, stood a log shack; on the windows, cheap lace curtains; behind the lace curtains, a vague movement of peeping faces and a querulous termagant voice: "I ain't a goin' to have you mixed up in no scrap; so there, Dan Flood!"

Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible.

"Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat.

"Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!" The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again.

"Is he—home?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet.

"No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called 'way! Is there any message?"

Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door knob.

"Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald." "There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for an outsider—"

"Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about it."

He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to clock work stockings and high heeled slippers.

"A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye the sheriff's—woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn't flush; but the faintest gloss came over the saffron skin—of what? It was the same nonchalant, wordless insolence that had played in the eyes of the man who had come out from the Senator's ranch.

"Yes, Sir, I'll deliver your message a' right," flickered the headlights reassuringly.

The old man stood stolidly and scorched the lady's eyes.

"How long since y'r sheriff thing set out? Did he break loose by the back door?"

"There ain't no back door," snapped the headlights; and the front door slammed in their faces. Wayland burst in a peal of laughter.

"'Tis no laughing matter! 'Tis bad enough t' depend on that broken reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to go back an' have him oot; but that—pot ash pate—" what else the old man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age. They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and mounted their horses.

"Well, Sir?" asked Wayland. "I don't wish to offend your British sense of law; but which way now?"

The old man left the reins hanging on the broncho's neck. The horses began cropping the grass. The Ranger was fumbling at his stirrup.

"A'm sore puzzled, Wayland! 'Tis not in the blood of a British born to go outside law. Y'r no thinkin' that; are y', Wayland?"

"I am saying nothing! The law protects them in their lawlessness. It doesn't protect us in our lawfulness. The American citizen is the law-maker. There is only one thing for an American citizen to do—get to work and enforce his laws—"

"Then—God's name, Wayland, go ahead and do it! Take the lead! A'll follow! This trail go behind the mountain?"

"Yes, it brings us round behind! They have the start of us by three hours; but they'll camp to-night somewhere along the Lake Behind the Peak. Beyond that, there are some mighty bad slides. These rains have loosened snows. They'll hardly cross the slides beyond the lake but by daylight. If we can reach the lake to-day, we'll have a chance at 'em."

"Wayland, A'm on the last lap of my trail! It doesn't matter what happens to me; but have you thought what might happen when we catch up on them? Those fellows are out to kill. We are out to arrest. Have you thought what that might mean at close quarters?"

"It's close quarters I'm seeking," said Wayland, "though it's hardly fair to drag you into the fight. All I want is a man as a witness who's got red blood that won't turn yellow. This Nation has been cowering behind the line of law, while the looters and skinners have disarmed our very firing line. It's time somebody risked his neck to reverse the order—"

"Git epp," said the old man roughly to his broncho.

The little pack mule took to the trail ears back at an easy lope; and the riders set off up the Pass at the rocking-chair trot of the plains-horseman. Gradually, the mountains crowded closer, in weather-stained rock walls, with a far whish as of wind or waters coming up from the canyon bottom; the sky overhead narrowing to a cleft of blue with the frayed pines and hemlocks hanging from the granite blocks, fragile as ferns against the sky. You looked back; the rocks had closed to a solid wall; you looked down; the river filling the canyon with a hollow hush had dwarfed to a glistening silver thread with the forest dwarfed banks of moss. It was a sombre world, all the more shadowy from that cleft of blue over head where an eagle circled with lonely cry.

The Pass was like the passage of birth and death from life to larger life. On the other side of the mountain lay the sun-bathed Valley and the Ridge with its silver cataracts and the opal peak with the glistening snow cross. This side, the Mountain in the Valley of the Shadow became giant beveled masonry, tier on tier, criss-crossed and scarred by the iced cataracts of a billion years—no sound but the raucous scream of the lone eagle, the hollow hush of the far River, the tinkling of the water-drip freezing as it fell. Then, where the cleft of blue smote the rocks with sunlight, the doors of the mountains would open again to larger life in another Valley.

The horses were no longer trotting. They were climbing and blowing and pausing where the trail of the Pass took sharp turns, back and forward, up and up, till the eagle was circling below. Both men had dismounted and were walking Indian file to the rear, Wayland carrying his own cased rifle. The trail was now running along the edge of an escarpment no wider than a saddle, sheer drop below, sheer wall above.

"How would they come out from the gully on this trail, Wayland? I have been watching for the tracks. They're not ahead of us."

"Gully ends in a blind wall above. As I make it, they'd push their nags up and come down on the Pass trail somewhere below the precipice ahead. We can take our time; I have been watching. There are no tracks ahead. The trail above is worse than this. Devil takes care of his own; or they would have broken their necks long ago coming back and forward. We'll let 'em go down to the lake first. They'll go into the trap. It's a lake mostly ice this time of the year. There's an old punt sometimes used by hunters. It'll take them an hour to cross with their horses. We'll let them camp at the lake. We could pot them there, if we had a sheriff worth his salt."

"'Tis a great trail, Wayland! Minds me of my days building bridges in the Rockies! 'Tisn't just a matter o' courage to follow these precipice trails: it's temperament! 'Tis something in the pit o' the stomach! A mind one of our best engineers; he could meet Chinese navvies with their knives out: couldn't cross one of the precipices to save his life without blinders like a horse: we had to blindfold him so he wouldn't know till he'd crossed. How deep do you call it here?"

"About 7,000 feet drop, I think. This is the top of the Pass. We go down after we leave the precipice! See—? the horses know it! They are taking their top-turn rest."

The two men glanced below. In the shadowed depths, they could see the River tearing down a white fume, a pantherine thing leaping—leaping—; and the hollow roar of water filled the canyon with a quiver that was tangible. Far below, the eagle flew lazily, lifting and falling to the throb of the canyon winds. Suddenly, the air was cut by a piercing whistle. Both men jumped.

"It's only a marmot." The Ranger pointed over his shoulder to the little gray beast sitting on the face of the rock. "Curious place, this Pass! There is an echo here—if it were not that we don't want to announce ourselves, I'd let you hear it. If you yell or sing, you can hear the thing dancing along that opposite wall—Kind of uncanny, the echo voice, in the mist here sometimes."

But the whistle of the marmot had also startled the horses. The tired pack mule gave a hobbling jump and came to a stand. A stone no larger than a horse-shoe kicked loose, tottered on the edge, and went bounding over. It struck the tier of rock below with clattering echo, displaced another stone twice its size, then bounced—bounced—and a slither of slaty rock the size of a house wrenched out—shot into mid-air with crash and sharp clappering echoes—Then the Pass was filled with the thundering roll. They saw it sink—sink—sink and fade, while the echo still rocketted amid the rock tops—sink—sink—sink—no larger than a spool in the purple shadows, till with a plunge it disappeared.

"Whew, it would be going if one went over." The old man mowed the sweat from his forehead and drew a breath.

On the instant, the hollow chasm of the canyon split to the crash of a rifle shot that rocketted and quaked and repeated in splintering echoes; and a bullet pinged at Wayland's feet.

"That's splitting the air for you—Wayland."

"Drop down, Sir," urged the Ranger, pulling the old frontiersman to shelter of the upper rocks. "They have come out above. They have heard that cursed stone. That's only a chance shot to learn where we are. They can't come behind. They have got to go down ahead—"

"And the fat's in the fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse," deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his belt beneath the leather coat.

"They won't understand this pursuit at all," explained Wayland. "Sheriff Flood is the guarantee of safety for any criminal in the country side. They'll think it a citizens' posse. Where this trail comes down at the end of the precipice is a crag. Will you hide behind that, sir? I'll go above and head them down. I'm not asking you to risk your life. They'll not see you till they gallop down."

"But you are risking your own life if you go up?"

"So does the fellow who has slipped on a banana peel," said Wayland.



CHAPTER XIII

THE MAN ON THE JOB

The two men proceeded along the precipice trail of the Pass. The shouting river below boisterous from the full flood of noon-day thaw began to hush. By the shadows, the Ranger knew that the afternoon was waning. The echoes from the shot still rocked in sharp crepitating knocks as of stone against stone, fainter and fading. Then a quiver of wind met their faces. The chasm opened to the fore like a gate, or a notch in the serrated ridge of the sky-line; and the precipice trail dropped over the edge of the crag to the scooped hollow of a slope where rock slide or avalanche had plowed a groove in the bevelled masonry of the precipice.

"This is the place," indicated Wayland.

From the shoulder of the higher slope came a little narrow indurated trail scarcely a hand's width, marked by the cleft foot-prints of a mountain goat. Where the path came down to the main trail of the Pass, jutted a huge rock left high and dry on its slide to the bottom of the gorge.

"Keep behind the other side of that, sir! They can't possibly see you."

"How do you know that trail comes from the Ridge gully? Looks to me like a goat track."

"Because I built it! You can see the N. F. trail sign—one notch and one blaze on that scrub juniper. Up on the Mesas, we were off the Forests. Here, we are back on them. You may not know it, sir; but this canyon is part of the region Moyese wants withdrawn for homesteads. You could homestead a reservoir for Smelter City here—pay a German or a Swede three-hundred to sit on this site—then sell for a couple of million to the Smelter City gang. They would get the suckers in the East to buy the bonds to pay for it. A fellow in the Sierras located a hundred water power sites that way."

The old Britisher was not following the Ranger's reasoning in the least.

"Then, if we are really on the National Forests, that is your territory, and we have the legal right to make an arrest?"

Wayland laughed outright. If you don't see why, then you do not know the stickling of a Briton's sense of law and a Scotchman's conscience. Matthews took up his station behind the rock that abutted on the trail.

He saw the Ranger hasten back along the face of the precipice, stop where the rock offered foothold and begin slowly climbing almost vertically. At first, it was going up the tiers of a broken stone stair. Then, the weathered ledge gave place to slant shale. He saw Wayland dig his heels for grip, grasp a sharp edge overhead, and hoist himself to the overhanging branch of a recumbent pine; then, scramble along the fallen trunk to a ledge barely wide enough for footing. Along this, he cautiously worked, face in, hand over hand from rock block to rock block, sticking fingers among the mossed crevices, fumbling the pebbles from the slate edges, and so round out of sight behind a flying buttress of masonry and back in view again a tier higher.

Just once, the watcher felt a tremor for the rash climber. Wayland's head was on a level with the crest of another ledge, his face to the rock, his left hand gripping a shoot of mountain laurel, his right groping the upper rocks. The old man saw the shrub jerk loose, moss, roots and all—he held his breath for the coming crash—it was all over. Wayland's left arm flung out to ward off the spatter of small stones; then, the right arm had clutched the spindly bole of a creeping juniper—his body lurched out, hung, swayed, lifted; and the Ranger disappeared among the shrubbery of the upper trail.

The old man took a deep breath.

"And this is the Man on the Job," he said. He drew behind his shelter and waited. "The same breed o' men after all, in different harness."

He had not noticed before, but there, ahead, where the black chasm of the Pass opened portals to the sunny blue of another valley, lay a lake, the Lake Behind the Peak, spangled with light, marbled like onyx or malachite, with the sheen of a jewel. Almost at his feet below, the near end of it lay. He could have tossed a pebble into it, seven-thousand feet below, where the white foaming river came ramping through a great pile of moraine that dammed up this end of the Pass to the width of a bridle trail. The outlaws would have to cross the lake to escape from the Pass; and almost, he thought, he saw the old punt at the far end, which Wayland had said hunters sometimes used.

The white butterflies flitted past his hiding place out to the light of the sun. The eagle was soaring strong-winged, swerving and lifting and falling in an insolence of languid power. The silent Pass quivered to the throb of waters. But what was doing with the Ranger? Not a sound came from the upper trail but the tinkle of hidden springs down the rocks. He knew if he uttered a shout, the echo would take up his call. An hour passed: two hours. Ghost shadows came creeping into the canyon. The butterflies had fluttered out to the blue portal where the rocks opened doors to the sun. The rampant roar of the river was quieting to the hollow hush. The old man rose, walked along the precipice, came back to his shelter, sat, stood up, examined the rifle, looked ahead where the horses had wandered on, fidgeted, and bemoaned the years that prevented pursuit up the rock face. He knew by the light and the hush that it must be almost five o 'clock.

And at five o'clock in the ranch house back in the Valley, Eleanor was lying in her room with her face buried in Wayland's note, praying as only the young pray, with the worst and the best of their nature in the prayer; for where such love comes, all goes into the incense of the fire that goes up from the altar—the best and the worst of the inmost heart: an apotheosis of "give-me" and an utter abandonment of "let-me-give." By and by, when we grow older, we leave both the "give me" and the "let-me-give" to God.

The old man knew it must be almost six o'clock; for the light came aslant the gap and the chill of the upper snow crept down from the mountain. A pretty business this, it seemed to him: twenty miles back of beyond; horses sent on at random ahead; a gang of murderers in hiding above—Matthews walked boldly along the precipice trail, saw the eagle below circling, still circling; heard a hawk skirr and scold from a dead branch—Then, he deliberately pointed his voice to the rock wall of the echo across the gorge and let out a yell that split the welkin—A thousand—ten thousand—multitudinous eldritch laughing echoes came jibbering and mumbling and giggling and shrilling back from the rock, filling the Pass with chattering, knocking sounds that skipped from stone to stone.

Instantly, a shot, a shout, a bang, the rocking crash of echoes—mixed with ear-splitting, rocketting shots—a crunch of feet—the old man dashed to the hiding of his crag. A spurt of gravel mid showers of dust and snorting of horses—Not on the trail at all but almost over his back, slithered and slid and bunched horses and men, pell mell, the white horse leading the way braced back on its haunches, the fellow in the yellow slicker rumbling a volcano of lurid curses—The outlaws had not followed the goat track at all but jumped sheer from the higher slope to the Pass trail.

Shouting "Stop!—Stop!—I command you in the name of the State to stop—!" the old man sprang to the middle of the trail flourishing the rifle above his head.

"State be damned," yelled the fellow in the oil-skin slicker. Never pausing, turning only to shoot at wild random, the outlaws had tumbled—stumbled—slid down the slatey slope for the lake.

There was the pound—pound—the huffing of saddle leather—and a horse came spurring along the Pass trail at reckless gallop. The old man flung himself athwart—a rider in sheep-skin leggings, hat far back, came round the rock at break neck pace looking over his shoulder as if pursued—One jump—the old frontiersman had the horse's bridle! The shock threw the beast's hind legs clear over the edge jarring the rider almost to the animal's neck. Next—the old man was looking down the barrel of the outlaw's big repeater—With a mighty swing, Matthews clubbed his rifle on the other's wrist. He might have scruples as to law and conscience; but he knew how and when and where to hit, did the Briton with the Scotch-Canadian blood. Also he knew when to let go—There was a flash—the rock splintering crash of echo, the whinnying scream and leap of the horse shot by the falling weapon—Rider and beast hurtled backwards, the man's foot caught to one stirrup—There was the crackling of slate and shale—the gash and rasp and wrench of loosening rock masses sliding—down—down—down and yet down, with knocking echoes; with laughter of terrified scream from the echo rock across the gorge—pound and plunge from ledge to ledge—the horse's body turning twice as it struck and bounced out—a cloud of dust—the shout, the blasphemy, the cry of rage, then the shrill scream of death terror that echoed and echoed—The old man looked down! There was a pounding of the stones—a faint far rebound and the darkness below swallowed over a fading swirl at the bottom of the canyon. He heard, he thought, he heard the engulfing gurgle of the waters, while the shrill scream still jibbered and faded along the echo ledge.

"By violence ye lived—by violence ye die—over the precipice ye go as ye sent the mangled boy to the bloody death!"

Then the Ranger was tumbling down the goat track in a slither of shale.

"Come on—that was well done, sir! Wish we'd sent them all over to the very bottom of Hell—! I'd stalked that fellow apart from the others when you signaled—come on—we'll catch the rest at the lake—there's a fellow wounded—you must have nipped one when you shot this morning—join me at the lake," and leaving Matthews to follow by the foot trail, the delirious Ranger went tearing exultant down the stone slide. Water-muffled shots sounded from the lake. Wayland paused in his head-long descent. The five outlaws were shoving the punt from the shore with the bronchos swimming in tow. The stolen wagon horses, lay shot on the shore. One of the outlaws was being supported by the others. It was the man in the yellow slicker.

A great wave went over Wayland of something he had never before known. It pounded at his temples. It set his heart going in a force pump. It blew his lungs out, and set the whip cord muscles itching to go—to go—he wanted to shout with joy of power—power that pursued and caught and crushed—and trembled with overplus of intoxicated strength—He knew if he could lay his hand on Crime at that moment he could crush the life out of the thing's throat; and there was a parchedness that was not thirst, a tingling to clinch that Criminal Thing menacing the Nation, to clinch and strangle it to a death not honored in the code of white-corpuscled anaemic study-chair reformers.

"Well," he said, as the other came limping down to the shore, "I didn't think there could be enough of the savage in me to enjoy a manhunt."

The old Briton looked queerly at the young fellow.

"A'm beginnin'—," he said slowly, "A'm beginnin' to understand y'r lynch law in this country—an' the why."

"What do you make of it?" asked Wayland, too excited to notice the other's abstraction.

"A'm beginnin' to understand if y' monkey with the law much longer in this land, the whole Nation will go locoed like you, Wayland—with a blood thirst for righteousness—a white passion for the square deal—an' God pity—that day!"

The fugitives had reached the far shore of the lake, landed and were riding off when a second thought seemed to bring one man back to the water's edge. He stooped, heaved up a rock, threw it through the bottom of the old punt.

"You'll have to do better than that to keep me from crossing," said Wayland.

The fellow was aiming his rifle. Wayland and Matthews jumped behind the big hemlocks.

"He's fulling a skin bag wi' water."

"Then, they intend to cross the Desert," inferred Wayland; "but they'll have to go farther to slip me."

One of the riders was scanning back with a field glass.

"Looking for number six—Of all the colossal effrontery—they are actually going to speak."

The fellow nearest shore lowered his rifle and trumpeted both hands.

"Speak louder—can't hear ye." Matthews had gone to the edge of the lake. The answer came faint and muffled.

"Where's—our—pardner—?"

"Hold up y'r hands—all five," roared back Matthews.

The arms of all but the hurt man went above heads, hands facing.

"Y'll find y'r man's carcass in the bloody mess where ye sent the sheep—! d' y'—see yon eagle?—'Tis pickin' his bones—" roared Matthews through funnelled palms; and both jumped back to the shelter of the hemlocks. The outlaws drew together to confer.

"They don't believe us," said Wayland. "They'll camp in the timber over there for the night and wait. All right, my friends! You'll not have to wait long; no longer than it takes you, sir, to find our pack mule and the stray bronchs, while I build a raft. We can't cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can't cross the upper end for the ice; and it's too cold to risk swimming."

Matthews had headed the horses and pack mule back from an open glade and hobbled their fore feet. Then Wayland began chopping down small trees. They saw the figures of the outlaws against the twilight of the gap ride away from the far margin of the lake. Then only did the Ranger build a little fire behind the biggest hemlocks, an Indian's tiny chip fire, not "the big white-man's blaze." On this, they cooked their supper, lake trout hauled out while they waited, and flap jacks, with a tin plate for a frying pan.

"Anyway," said the Ranger wiping the smoke tears from his eyes, "the smoke keeps off the mosquitoes."

"Mosquitoes, pah! That shows y're Yale for all y'r good work this day! A have no seen one yet."

Wayland's answer was to light his pipe. "It's either bear's grease, or smoke between bites," he laughed.

They had unsaddled horses and were sitting on a log watching the animals crop through the deep grasses.

The frontiersman uttered a sigh. "'Tis like a taste of the good old days, the days well nigh gone for ever; the smell of the bark fire; an' th' tang of the kinnikinick; an' the cinnamon cedars; and the air like champagne; an' the stars prickin' the crown o' the hoary old peaks like diamonds; an' the little waves lappin' an' lavin' an' whisperin' an' tellin' of the woman y' luve. An' care? Care, man? There wasna' a care heavier than dandelion down. 'Twas sleep like a deep drink, an' up an' away in the mornin', chasin' a young man's hopes to the end o' the Trail! A suppose th' Almighty meant t' anchor men, or He wouldna' permit the buildin' of toons! Once A was in New York! A did na' see but one patch o' sunlight twenty stories overhead! Th' car things screeched an' rulled an' the folks—the wimmen wi' awfu' stern wheeler hats, an' the men—hurryin'—hurryin'!—Wayland, d' they get it? There's only twenty-four hours in a day—they can't catch any more by hurryin'—what are they hurryin' for? Do they get it—what they're hurryin' for? Do they get anywhere? D' they sit down joyous at night? A heard some laugh—It was not joyous! Do they get anything down there in the awfu' heat?"

Wayland laughed. "I don't know," he said. "Care isn't light as dandelion fluff! I'll bet on that."

The roar of waters below the moraine softened and quieted. There was a chorus of little waves lipping and whispering among the reeds. A whole aeon of resinous sunbeams breathed their essence through the dark from the spicy evergreens. One need not attempt to guess of what Wayland was thinking. He had forgotten his companion's presence till the old man spoke.

"A suppose, Wayland, you are only one of an army of kiddie boys on the job out here?"

Wayland absently roused himself.

"Land Service and Reclamation men have tougher jobs and less glory. All we have to do is sit tight and it's a pretty good place to sit tight in—this out-door world. Different with the other fellows! They're hamstrung by the red tape of office, or blackguarded by some peanut politician who is scoring an opponent! There was Walker down at Durango, shot examining a coal fraud. He was a Land Office man; and his murderers have not even been punished. Then, there were the two chaps, who ran the rapids before the Gunnison Tunnel could be built; though that's been exaggerated with a lot of magazine hog-wash to make a fellow sick! Biggest job there was the engineer's work. Do you know he drove that six mile tunnel from both ends and, when the two ends met, they were not two inches off? Hog-wash and dish-water hacks spread themselves in the magazines all over those chaps running the rapids! You've run ten times worse rapids, yourself, on Saskatchewan and MacKenzie hundreds of times. Yet those chaps—not one of them—noted the wonder of a tunnel driven from both ends coming out exactly even. Why, the poor ignorant foreign workmen cried when they met from both ends, got hold of one fellow's wrist through the mud wall and pulled him through bodily, cried like kids at the victory of it! Your town hack didn't know what it meant to be a sand hog under ground for years and come through to daylight like that. The ignorant foreigner knew. I guess a good dozen of 'em had sacrificed their lives to the work. They knew the quiet engineer fellow had conquered the earth; and that fellow doesn't get the salary of a Wall Street stenographer—a way Uncle Sam has. They'd give such a man a title and a fifty thousand a year pension in England or Germany.

"Then, there was Fessenden, unearthed a lot of fraud in Oregon and got himself crucified—got the bounce; had broken his health in that sort of thing; got fired because he proved up that some smug politicians had caused the death of an old couple by jumping their homestead claim and driving them to penury. Then, there was Carrington. He was on the Desert Reclamation Project; took his bride in on their honeymoon; hundreds of miles from the railroad. She was delicate—lungs; poor fellow thought perhaps camp life would cure her. She died there in the heat. Two or three of the men gave up their jobs to help bring the body out." Wayland land paused, lost in thought. "They got the body out all right; but, the horror of it, Carrington went off his head! Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads—but what's the use of talking about it? These things have to be done; and these are the men on the job."

"The Men on the Job," slowly repeated Matthews, "the men we make earls and premiers of in Britain; but who of your big public cares one jot? Time you wakened up as a Nation."

"You are using almost the same words as Moyese. He says the public doesn't care a damn, wouldn't raise a hand to stand for the rights of one of us, pays us less than dagoes earn. I guess Moyese doesn't understand our point of view, can't take in why we keep at it."

The wind came through the trees a phantom harper. The little waves lapped and whispered. The pine needles clicked pixy castanets; and the moon beams sifted through the trees a silver dust.

"Why do you? Why do you keep on the job?" asked the old man.

"Hanged if I know," answered Wayland uncomfortably.

"A saw a man on the job to-day risk his life twice and think no more about it than if he had been out for a walk. If a man in England, if a man in Germany, if a man in Italy, yes by thunder, Wayland, if a man on the job in pagan Turkey had done what you did to-day, he'd be given a V. C. accordin' to the Turk, and a title and a pension for life."

"I don't despair of a cross myself, when Moyese hears what happened to-day. It'll be a double cross with a G. B.; but, speaking of cross, as we have to cross the lake, don't you think you'd better snatch a little sleep?"

And so the two men, one representing the chivalry of the old West, the other the chivalry of the new, stretched out to sleep with coats for pillows, while the flood-waters went singing through the stones, and the little waves came lipping and whispering, and the low boom of the snow slides rolled through the chambered hollows of canyon and gorge. Absurd, wasn't it, but the Ranger was not dreaming about the bevelling trowel of the titan mountain gods? He went to sleep dreaming of the star visible from the other side of the Holy Cross, dreaming dreams that men and women have dreamed since time began; of drinking, drinking, and drinking yet again, of life and love and blessedness from the fount of human lips; of the seal that should be the seal to service, not to self; of the gates ajar to a new life like the notch of sky where the rocks of the Pass opened portals to the blue valley. Would he have dreamed less joyously if he had known that the portals of the Pass led to the avalanche and the desert and the alkali death? Who shall say that love did not pay the toll? And in him rioted the savagery of the fighter who wanted to seize his foe by the throat.



CHAPTER XIV

ON THE GAME TRAIL

The dull boom of a snow-cornice tumbling over some high cliff on the far side of the lake awakened the Ranger to the chill darkness of mountain night just before dawn. The moon had sunk behind the sky-line of the peaks; and the little lake laving among the reeds lay inky in the shadow of the heavy mist.

Wayland listened. The deep breathing of the horses round the ashes of the mosquito smudge guided him across to saddles. He placed saddles, pack trees and provisions on the raft. Then, he wakened the old man and pulled the grunting horses to their feet. A little riffle, half wind, half light, stirred the lake mist, revealing glare patches of snow reflection in the water.

"Hoh! man, but y'r old peaks have a nip in the air at three in the mornin'!" Matthews came down to the raft chaffing his hands. "That's a job worthy a woodsman," he observed, holding the halter reins while the Ranger got a couple of long poles.

A dozen saplings had been mortised to a couple of cottonwoods.

"They may take water; but they'll not sink; and they'll not tip," declared Wayland.

Reeds and willows had been used in place of nails. Two or three of the logs were spliced to grip the end cottonwoods firmly. The two men stepped on the raft.

"Why didn't you go round the upper end?"

"Ice," answered Wayland.

"Too deep for poling in the middle?" asked Matthews.

"That's why I'm going to creep along shore."

"It'ull keep y' in the shadows."

With a prod of his pole, Wayland shoved off, and the frontiersman lengthened out the leading lines for the horses. The Ranger smiled whimsically to find the reverse side of Holy Cross peak, up-side down in the water, and he set to figuring out what sort of triangular lines thought-waves must follow to connect his thought of that peak etched in the bottom of the lake with her thought on the other side of a peak up in the sky.

"Steady, man! Slow up! There's a fallen tree with its rump stuck ashore! A' don't want to warp ye in by snaggin' round; an' that mule brute is thinkin' o' sittin' down."

The bronchos had plunged to the cold dip with deep grunts, but the mule braced his legs and brayed at the morning. The frontiersman said things between set teeth that might have been objurgations to the soul of Satan or the race of mules. Wayland shoved on the pole. The mule pulled. The logs of the raft began to creak. "Look out, sir, we're splitting! Let that doggon brute go—"

And the raft swerved out, the horses swimming, the freed mule plunging along the wooded shore, Wayland thrusting his long pole deep, almost to his hand-grip, to find bottom.

"There's a nasty under current from the upper river," he said.

"Let her go, there—! let her go t' th' current—tack her an' the current wull swerve ye int' the other side! More men lose their lives by poling too hard than lettin' go! Catch the current and let her go."

The old man had twisted the halter ropes under his feet. He seized a pole and swerved the raft to the current, pointing in to the other side. They could hear the roar of the wild mountain stream pouring a maelstrom down from the glare ice and snow of the upper meadows. The next plunge of the pole missed bottom. There was a yielding creak of logs. The raft poised, and spun round.

"Let her go, man! We'll wriggle her in below!"

"Then loose your halter ropes, they're pulling us round."

They tossed the ropes free. Wayland waved his pole to head the bronchos across. They heard the mule squealing at the head of the lake.

"She can't sink—wriggle her round, Wayland!"

The raft spun twice to the under-pull, took an inch or two of water, and swirled into the quiet shadows of the far shore.

"Minds me of that story of Napoleon! Do you carry bridges in y'r pockets, too, Wayland?" asked the old man, as the Ranger gave a long prod that sent the raft grating ashore.

"What story?" asked Wayland.

"Oh, Boney came to a river too deep for swimming cavalry. General ordered engineer fellow to get 'em across! Man began to draw maps. When he came to Napoleon with his blue print plans, he found a common soldier fellow had pontooned 'em all across!"

"Did the big fellow get a leg up on his job; or did the soldier fellow get the bounce for going outside regulations?"

"That is possible, too." The old man was handing off the saddles and camp kit.

"If you'll wait here, sir, I'll go along for the horses! I don't know the trails along on this side! It's outside the N. F!"

There was no moonlight to guide him; but there was the wall of blue sky where the mountains opened; and he followed up the lake shore with a sense of feel more than sight for one of those little indurated game tracks that would lead back over the stones to the trail that the outlaws had seemed to follow. If you think it an easy thing to walk over a pile of moraine by the obscure light preceding dawn—try it! The great moraines flank the mountains in petrified billows stranded on the shores of time from the ice ages, in stones from the size of a spool to a house. Step on the small stones; and they roll, bringing down the whole bank in a miniature slide under your feet! Pick your way over the sharp edges of the big rocks; and the glazed moisture is slippery as ice; but he, whose foot hold fumbles, has no business in the mountain world; and the Ranger swung from crest to crest of the pointed rocks, safely shrouded in the lake mist, guided solely by the blank glare of sky between the mountain walls.

He could hear the tinkle of waters down the ledges on his right; and the little flutter of wind riffling through the Pass sucking up the mists forewarned dawn. He had climbed the roll of stone slowly, picking each step, for, perhaps, two-hundred feet, when that trail sense of feel made him stoop to examine the ground. The roll of moraine he had climbed met another stone billow; and between the two ran a groove, a little narrow hardened tracing where the tracks of game going to and from watering place had packed and worked in between the rolling pebbles the ice dust of a million years.

This, then, was the trail that the outlaws must have followed away from the lake. He stooped to examine closer. There were horse tracks. Had his own horses stumbled up from the lake along this trail? It would lead back to the camp fire of the night before. Better reconnoitre while there was still the hiding of the mist.

He looked back. The lake was obliterated by the mist curling up; but above he could see the black rocks of the precipice trail as if the Pass behind had closed its doors against retreat; and was it imagination, or did he see, an eagle soaring, strong-winged, majestically out from the rocks in curves of insolent power? Memory of the nauseating horror came over him in a physical wave; and curiously enough, he kept hearing the soft voice of the Senator's scoffing question: "Who of the public gives one damn?" It was easier sitting smug inside the firing line. He knew men in the Service who would call him a fool for going out on this present quest; and he knew others whose jealousy would say it was all done for self-advertising; and he knew also that he might be dismissed for going out beyond the letter in order to fulfil the spirit of the law; but preceding the horror of the precipice trail, was that other memory of the dead boy lying at the foot of the Rim Rocks beside the writhing mass of mutilated sheep.

The Ranger followed along the game trail. Who was it had said that the only difference between charcoal and diamond was that one was soft and the other hard? Was that what ailed the Nation? Had the fine edge of citizenship dulled? Was the Nation losing the fine edge of distinction between right and wrong?

Another little flutter of wind set the restless mists boiling.

"Strange it is hot so early," thought Wayland. Fir trees stood out from the shifting gray haze. Among them, did he see shadows moving? They might be deer coming down to water. Involuntarily, he stepped behind some alder brush off the trail. Another flutter of wind thinning the turbid mist. There was a whiff of camp smoke. Through the mist, he could make out figures not a hundred yards away—five horses ready for travel, four men clumsily lifting a fellow in cow-boy slicker into his saddle. The man fell forward over the pummel. The group seemed undecided what to do. Then, picked out—distinct—deliberate—coming over the stones from the lake side—leisurely, lazily, careful, soft footsteps with rests between—The Ranger would not have been surprised to see the missing outlaw limp from the mist—Then, the head of his own errant mule bobbed forward, and another roll of mist came up from the lake. Wayland caught the trailing halter, headed the amazed little animal back down the goat track with an urgent kick and sprang after it to a clatter of rolling stones. When the clamor sank, he heard the pound of hoofs as the outlaws galloped in the other direction. Five paces farther, he found both the bronchos nosing consolingly round the mule. Wayland emitted a deep breath of relief. If he had waited five minutes longer at the raft, they would have had his horses. It was all in the difference between being on the wrong and the right side of five minutes.

"Y' don't need t' tell me we're goin' South an' down—We might be goin' to the bottomless pit. The wind's like a furnace."

"Off the Desert," explained the Ranger.

The sun had risen high above the peaks. The mists had receded to belts and wisps of cloud against the forests. Waters tumbling wind-blown from the ledges were swelling to a chorus. Little cross bills and jays that had come round the breakfast camp still followed the pack train.

"As this is off y'r National Forests, A suppose y' couldn't have jumped into the bunch an' arrested every man-jack of 'em?"

"Not without being a target for five shots while they would have been targets for only one."

"We'd have strung 'em up in the good old days, an' sent for the sheriff to clean up the remnants."

They had left the goat track and dipped down a shaggy green hollow between mountains that seemed to slope to lakes of pure light above a blue open plain.

"Any citizen can arrest a law breaker whereever found. Our badge is supposed to increase that privilege; but the crime was committed just a stone's throw off the grazing ground in the National Forests. We'd have to turn our prisoners over to Sheriff Flood. How long do you think he'd keep 'em in custody? They'd escape while he was having an attack of 'look-the-other-way—'"

"Your idea to run 'em aground in their own State?"

"Not necessary to go so far. Run them across this State line—then catch them off guard in some of these canyons or arroyos. Turn them over to a sheriff who doesn't owe his bread and butter to Moyese. He'll have to hold them till Williams and MacDonald come down to testify. By that time, I fancy we'll hear from people who have been losing stock all the way up from Arizona. Moyese will be keeping mighty quiet."

"Meanwhile, Mr. White-vest, who planned all this deviltry—he goes free! These are only the poor rowdy tools for—"

"For the Man Higher Up," finished Wayland.

"Wayland, who is this white-vested anarchist, this vested-righter who subverts your laws?"

"His name is Legion, sir! That's what's the matter! These hide-bound vested righters are only vested righters when the rights don't happen to belong to some other man." The Ranger related the incidents of the visit to the Ridge.

The old man rode along in silence.

"And from what you say," finished Wayland, "he evidently didn't mean any harm to come to the boy; but that is always the way with this cursed system. You're law breaking law-makers, your divine-right-king-crooks out here—don't plan crime. They only plan to have their own way. It's like a man breaking down a dam to get a little water. When the floods burst through the break, he thinks it isn't his fault."

"That's what some of our Scotch kings thought; we took their heads off just the same."

"Well, if we can get our people wakened up, we'll take a few heads off, too, at election time." He touched his pony to a brisk trot across the meadow, following the mule as it dodged in and out among the larches, up over a saddle back and down again thwarting a long bare hollow.

Wayland saw the light come sifting in gold dust. Somehow, the warmth of it swept round him in a consciousness of that night on the Ridge. It was like the snow flakes she talked about, sculpturing the rocks, shaping destiny. Would the day ever come when they two could ride forth adventuring happiness together? The hammer of a woodpecker, the resinous tang of the gold-dust air, the shaking of the evergreen needles like gypsy tambourines—filled him with an absurd sense of the joy of life; and he could never drink the joy of these things without thinking of her; for the consciousness of her presence, of the warm glow of her love, enveloped all now, permeated his being, a life inside his life, blended of his own.

"A don't like the way that mule o' yours keeps lookin' ahead with both ears, Wayland! It's all-fired quiet here, for noon-hour when the streams should be shouting. There is something mighty queer and still in this air. Yon saucy woodpecker has quit drillin'! Hold back a bit! A'm goin' ahead! A've known these mountains longer than you have," and curving through the brushwood, the old frontiersman came out ahead of the pack leader.

The little mule had undoubtedly followed a kind of trail. Though the grasses were saddle-high, punky logs showed the fresh rip of shod horses. Little mossy streams betrayed roiled water and stones over-turned. Then, the path emerged from the trees so abruptly you could have drawn a line along the edge of the timber, out to a great hollowed slope, wind-blown, bare of rocks, clear of trees as if levelled by a giant trowel; hushed, preternaturally hushed, the Ranger thought as he came up abreast and glanced to the top of the long slope where the snows glistened over the edge of the rocks heavy and white.

"This is what we heard last night! See, Wayland, the snow up there has been breakin'! It sags! Got its fore feet forward for a race down one of these days!"

Both men became aware of something portentous and heavy in the silence: it was mid-day; but there was no noon-time shout of disimprisoned waters. Not a crossbill, not a jay, neither eagle nor hawk, showed against the azure fields of sky and snow. A little riffle as of waiting fluttered through the grasses and leaves. Wayland was looking with dumb amazement at the great field of laurel in bloom across the slope; three or four miles of it, leaves of green wax in the sun, flowers passion pale, motionless, waiting; what was it he missed? The insect life; there were neither butterflies nor bees rifling the fields of honey bloom; the flowers, acres and acres of them, stood passion pale, motionless waiting—waiting what? Then, there was a singing in his ears, a weird strange undertone to the hush of the forest behind them. His breath came heavy. The old man was speaking in a muffled voice.

"See, boy, there are three men on the other side! They are signalling."

Wayland came alive out of his strange trance.

"It isn't to us they are signalling. Move back quick, out of sight, sir; see! there's a man half way across, the fellow in the yellow slicker! There's some one on foot holding him in his saddle! What ever are they waving so frantically for?"

Involuntarily, both men had wheeled the ponies back in the screen of trees, when the old man cried out: "What in blazes ails your mule?"

The little animal had jumped sideways.

"Get back, quick! for God's sake, Wayland! A know the signs from the Canadian Rockies. It isn't us they are signalling. It's the snow; it's coming, Wayland!"

The words were smothered by a tremor grinding through the hollow hush. There was a split, a splintering, a dull boom of titanic weight falling, miles away. They saw the puff of snow dust fly up in a toss of mist over the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped as a great white snake in and out among the far upper meadows: then ruptured free with ear splitting wrench. The air was ripped to tatters. The forest, the rock wall, the foundations of the universe gave way; the huge hemlocks were tossing and bending like feathers; the upper forests toppled and spilled like an inverted matchbox. Then the whole world, earth, air, rocks, forest, shot down in a blinding rush, in a viscous torrent of titanic fury. The surface of the mountain crumpled up and peeled in a sliding mass.

Wayland came to himself hurled back a hundred feet knocked flat by an invisible blow. The old frontiersman lay clinging to a prone trunk spitting blood and gasping for air. The animals were scrambling to their feet saddles twisted, bridles broken.

"'Twas the concussion of the air! A'm not hurt, not a feather o' my head hurt! A've seen it before in the Rockies! Look back," he panted.

When the Ranger turned, the clouds of dust were settling, though the earth still rocked. A hundred feet of snow lay across the trail in a wall. Huge trees had been torn from the roots, sucked in, twisted and torted like straws.

"Look," reiterated the old frontiersman.

Against the rock trail on the other side of the snow slide, three men stood waving frantically. From the time the falling cornice of snow had tossed up in a puff of smoke ten miles away to the fell stroke of the titanic leveller of the ages—not ten seconds had passed. It would have been an even bet that the men on the other side had been caught in the middle of their sentences, in the middle of their signalling. As for the injured man and his companion—Wayland looked down the mountain slope. The snow slide had shot to the bottom and gone quarter way up the other side.

"'Twill be safer now to cross to the other side! We can go up above the snow slide and cross by the bare rocks!"

But Wayland was unheeding. What was it about snow flakes massing to a momentum that bevelled the granite and rolled away the rocks for the resurrection to a new life? Would it be so some day with the Nation? Would the quiet workers, the pure thinkers, the faithful citizens mass some day to sweep away the lawlessness, the outrage, the crime, the treachery, the trickery, the shame, the sham of self-government's failures; to roll away the stone for the resurrection to a new Democracy? 'High brows,' 'dreamers,' 'ghost walkers,' 'barkers,' 'biters,' 'muck-rakers!' Oh, he knew the choice names that lawless greed cast at such as he; but a greater than he had said something about the meek and the inheritance of the earth; and there lay the work of the snow flake across the trail.

"I suppose," he remarked absently, "it's our duty to go down and dig those dead duffers out."

"Nothing o' the kind. They'll keep cold storage till the crack o' doom, and after that 'tis an ice pack they'll need. The snow's too clean a grave for the likes o' them! The Lord has hewn out a path through the sea! Sound the loud timbrel and on!"



CHAPTER XV

THE DESERT

Four days had passed since they stood on the edge of the snow slide and gazed across at three outlaws on the far side under the crag waving frantically where their belated comrades had been buried under the avalanche. When the outlaw drovers had turned and galloped into the blue slashed gully of the opposite mountain, the Ranger had observed that their only remaining pack horse was white, an old dappled white running with a limp.

It had taken the better part of three days to cross above the wreckage of snows and forest. They had camped for two nights within a stone's throw of the upper glaciers. Wayland could see the reflection of the stars in the ice at night, and count the layers of the century's snow-fall that harked back, each layer a year's fall, to the eras before Christ.

"The little snow flake has been on the job a long time," he said to the old preacher.

Matthews didn't understand. "Can't make out why it's so hot when we're high up!"

"The wind is off the Desert," said Wayland.

"Mountains in a desert?"

"That's the same as asking if you ever have summer in Saskatchewan."

The frontiersman looked more puzzled than ever.

Wild longings to seize the day's joy came to the Ranger. If the snow flake typified law sculpturing the centuries, law was a process not of a life time, not of a century, but aeons of centuries; and flesh, spirit, humanity's brevity cried out for the trancing joys of the present. If law took billions of years to sculpture its purpose, grinding down the transient lives in its way?—When Wayland came to that impasse, he used to get off and walk. He did not know, and it was well he did not know, she was pacing her room two hundred miles back on the other side of the Divide, praying that he might succeed in one breath, that he might come back in another, and praying always that they might both be strong.

Every mile was a mile deeper into the eternity of her love . . . he knew that; but he also knew that the fulfilment of duty meant renunciation. Was it the cry of the flesh? Wayland scoffed the thought. Flesh in the frontier West doesn't take the trouble to wear fig-leaf signs. It is blazoning, bold, unashamed, known for what it is; but there is no confusion of values. He who wills takes what he wills and wears the mark. Wayland had been long enough away from the confused values of more civilized lands to know belladonna eyes from starlight; and he knew what his being craved was not carrion. It was what harmonizes both flesh and spirit, and lifts the temporal to eternity. Eternity . . . he laughed again. Eternity was too short; and that was what renunciation meant, giving up a citadel against all the harking cares and hells of hate in life.

Where they had picked up the fugitives' trail again on the fourth day from the snow slide, the Ranger had taken stock of provisions. We none of us know just how long the Trail is to be when we set out. Flour and tea enough for a month's travel: of bacon and canned beans, only a day's supply remained.

"Yes, on your life, forward, long as there's a mouthful left . . . push on," Matthews had urged.

Wayland expostulated: "Do you know what Desert travel means?"

"No, an' care less! If y' want to get anywhere, ye don't set out to turn back! Dante's inner circle was ice! A've had that! Now, A'll take a nip of his outer circle and try your blue blazing Desert."

"It'll be blue all right, sir! You'll know it when you come to it by the shadows being blue instead of black."

And always, the trail had grown rockier, the forests more scattered, the trees scantier and dwarfed, till the way led from clump to clump of scrub pinon amid red buttes and sand hummocks. And always, the valleys widened and lifted to higher table lands, blasted and shrivelled and tremulous of heat, till the mountains lay on the far sky-line silver strips flecked with purple, like shores to an ocean of pure light. And always, it was the trail of fleeing horsemen they followed, with one track running aside from the others picking the softest places.

"Only one pack horse and that lame," Wayland pointed to the foot prints. "That means they must have provisions cached some where on the way. If we can tire them out before they can reach their cache, we've got 'em."

Once, where the way led between flanking foot hills, the tracks dipped into a mountain stream and didn't come up on the other side. "Hoh!" commented the old man, "that's easy; you'll take the right and A'll take the left; and where the hills lift up ahead, A'm thinking you'll find the tracks plain."

All the same, Wayland noticed Matthews frequently moistening his parched lips; and the lakes of light ahead lay a wavering looming veil. A mile farther on, the ripped punk of a dead pinon betrayed the passing of the fugitives. When Wayland dismounted to examine the marks, he stepped on a small cactus. They picked up a trail that led over rocky mesas and dipped suddenly into the deep dug-way of a dry gravel bed. The sand walls of the dead stream afforded shelter from the sun, and the two riders spurred their bronchos to a canter led by the pack mule. The sand banks spread, widened, opened; and the mule stopped, both ears pointing forward like a hunting dog. They rode forward to find themselves looking down on an ocean of light, shimmering orange colored light, with the mountains trembling on the far sky line silver strips necked by purple and opal. The old frontiersman mowed the sweat from his brows and gazed from under shade of his level hand.

"Sun's like a shower o' red hot arrows," he said.

The sand lay fine as sifted ashes dotted with clumps of bluish-green sage brush and greasewood. A bleached ox-skull focussed the light with a glaze that stabbed vision. The ashy earth, the dusty sage brush, the orange sand hills, the silver strip on the far sky line flecked by the purple and opal loomed and wavered and writhed in a white flame.

"Do you see the bluish shade to the shadows?" asked Wayland.

The old man was still shading his eyes from the white heat. "Do A see mountains, Wayland?"

"Certainly, you do! Did you think the Desert flat as the sea?"

"That's just it! If A see mountains, then A see water too! It keeps wavering."

"By which you may know it isn't water," warned Wayland.

"Wayland, A' don't believe you!"

He had dismounted as he spoke and proceeded down the yellow sands to a pit at the foot of the rolling slope. Wayland saw him halt, again shade his eyes from the sun glare, and stoop. On his knees, he looked again and rose. He came up the slope shaking his head. "Y'd swear it was water at y'r very feet till you bent down."

"Till you changed the angle of reflection . . . eh? and then the water vanished, sir."

Both men had thrown their coats across the rear of the saddles. Matthews now knotted a large handkerchief round his neck. There was not a cloud, nor the shadow of a cloud for shade. It was a wilted, shrivelled, heat-flayed, fire-blasted world of arid desolation; trenched by the dry arroyos; sifted by the hot winds fine as flour; with rings and belts and wavering layers of heat—heat from the orange sun edged red by the Desert dust of the atmosphere—heat from the wind off some white flamed furnace—heat from the ochre shifting sands panting to the loom and writhe of the blue-flamed air, and over all a veil, was it blue or lilac or lavender? tinted as of rainbow mists. For a little while, neither spoke. Each knew what the dusty dead orange earth, the smoking sand hills, the sifted volcanic ash, the burnt oil smell of shrivelled growth, meant to unprepared travellers.

"I wish, sir," said Wayland, "I wish you would turn back here and let me go on alone; I really do!"

"What! turn tail like a whipped dog an' scuttle at first danger? Go to blazes, my boy! Do you think y'r beasts will stand crossing before sunset?"

"It's about as easy going ahead as standing still. If we only had a water canteen, it wouldn't be such a fool-thing to risk."

The wind flayed them with hot peppering sand.

"If we took time to go back for one now, this wind would wipe out the tracks."

"What's yon splash o' dust goin' over the roll o' th' hill?"

Beyond the quiver of the dusky heat, they could see the drift of ash dust eddying to the wind like dirty snow.

"I wish, sir, you would turn back here," urged Wayland; but Matthews was not heeding. He had gathered up the broncho's reins.

"Time to be moving," he said. "'Tis my observation, Wayland, that the devil gets away from the saint because, he'll always ride one faster. Many's the time when A've been pressed in the old days, when if the man behind had just ridden the one bit harder that he thought he couldn't, just not sagged where he nagged, he'd ha' got me, Wayland! When y' pace two men, one ridin' with the devil behind him, and the other jog trotting with a dumpy comfortable conscience, 'tis a safe bet which will win."

There was the clitter clatter of the horses' hoofs over the lava rocks; the padded beat of the easy plains lope as they left the lava for the ashy silt; then no sound but the swash of saddle leather along trail marks that cut the crusted silt like tracks in soft snow. The wind had been flaring a steady torrid white flame. Now it began to come in puffs and whirls that beat the air to dust of ashes and sent the sand foaming in the wave lines of a yellow sea. The mule no longer ambled ahead with ears pointed. He shuffled through the ash with dragging steps; and the sage brush crackled brittle where the trail led out from the silt across the baked earth. The heat waves writhed and throbbed through the atmosphere, a flame through a sieve, with a scorch of burning from the ground and clouds of dust like smoke.

"I think I'll get off and walk," said Wayland, suiting the action to the word. "I hope those blackguards are counting on camping at a spring to-night."

They plodded on for another half hour before Matthews answered.

"Do you think they did it intentionally? A mean, do y' think they lured us here to get rid of us?"

Wayland paused and thought.

"It's all the same whether they did or not . . . now! What was it you said about a man chased by the devil setting a good live pace? They have to find water. They know where water is. We don't! Only safety is to follow."

"Queer how y' keep imaginin' ye hear wimplin' brooks! When A let myself go, A keep hearin' the tinkle o' y'r rills back in the mountains! A keep seein' the blue false water waverin' up to my feet an' recedin' again! Isn't there a fellow in mythology, Wayland, died o' thirst in water because when he reached to drink it, it kept waverin' away?"

"That fellow had travelled in the Desert," answered Wayland.

He aimed his revolver at a green rattlesnake lying under a sage brush. The sun glinted from the steel barrel. The snake coiled and raised its head. "See," said Wayland, "the snake takes aim. The light sort of hypnotizes it. The greenest tenderfoot couldn't miss it."

"How far d' y' call it across?"

"Two to four days straight: eleven to twenty if you take it diagonally. As I make it, they are steering due West for one of the deep cut ways to take 'em South under shade."

"Shade would taste pretty good to me, Wayland."

Wayland looked back at his companion. What he thought, he did not say; but he mounted at once and hastened pace.

"Once we find a spring, we'll travel at night," he said.

A condor rose from the rocks and circled away with slow lazy sweep of wings.

"You would wonder what they could find to eat here, if it were not for the snakes and the lizards."

"Perhaps, we'll not wonder so much before we finish."

Wayland looked at the old frontiersman again. He was riding heavily, sagged forward, with one hand on the high pommel of the Mexican saddle.

"Talk about the heroes o' cold in the North," he said. "'Tis easy! Y'r cold buoys a man up! This stews the life out before ye have a fightin' chance! Y' could light a match on these saddle buckles."

"I think I see sand hills ahead. If there's any shade, we'll rest till twilight."

The lava rocks rolled to a trough of sand; and the light lay a shimmering lake in the alkali sink.

"Is that what y' call a false pond?"

"No, I hope you'll not see any false ponds this trip! False pond is in your head or your eye; and the harder you ride, the faster it runs. Let's get out of this wind!"

Wayland noticed the horses paw restlessly and nose at the gravel when they crossed the dry bed of a spring stream.

"Think y' could dig down to water with y'r axe, Wayland?"

The Ranger pointed to the wide cracks in the baked earth, dry as flour dust deep as they could see. The mule led the way at a run up the next sand roll.

"Think he smells water, Wayland?"

Another broad mesa rolled away to the silver strip of mountain on the sky line; but the fore ground broke into slabs and blocks of red stone. Wayland examined the trail. It twisted in and out among the rocks towards more broken country.

"There may be a canyon leading South over there," he pointed.

"Y' might try for a spring beneath that big rock. Looks green at the bottom."

A mist as of primrose or fire tinged the lakes of quivering light lying on the ochre-colored mesas. The sun hung close to the silver strip of mountain exaggerated to a huge dull blood-red shield.

"Wayland, is this desert light red or is it that A'm seein' red?"

The Ranger looked a third time at his companion. The old man sat more erect; but his eyes were blood shot. A puff of wind, a lift and fall and drift of sand, the wind met them in a peppering shower of hot shot.

"Is that a rain cloud comin' up?"

Wayland glanced back. The heavy dust rose a red-black curtain above the flame-crested ridges of orange sand.

"You're a churchman, sir! You should know! Ever read in Scripture of the cloud by day and the pillar by night? Ever think what that might mean on the scorching Red Sea job when Moses led a personally conducted tour through the desert?"

"Dust?" queried the preacher.

"By Harry," cried Wayland, "that mule does smell water."

The little beast had set off for the red rock at a canter. Wayland's horse followed at a long gallop. The broncho of the old clergyman with the heavier man lurched to a tired lope. They felt the eddies of dust as they tore ahead, saw the rainless clouds gathering low and gray far behind, saw the sun lurid through the whirls of red silt, saw the dust toss up among the lava beds like snow in a blizzard, then the sand storm broke, the dry storm of rainless clouds and choking dust flaying the air in rainless lightning. They gave the ponies blind rein and shot round the sheltered side of the great red rock into one of those hidden river beds that trench below the surface of the desert in cutways and canyons. It was dry.

"The shadow of a great rock in a weary land," quoted the old man sliding from his horse exhausted.

Foot prints of men and horses punctured the moist silt of the river bottom. The little mule was kicking and squealing where the red rock came through the clay bank. Down the terra cotta ledge trickled a tiny rill not so large as a pencil. Wayland was chopping a deep mud hole in the river-bottom up which slowly oozed a yellow pool.

"Don't drink that, sir," he ordered.

The old frontiersman was stooping to lave up a handful of the muddy fluid.

"Don't drink that if you want to get out alive! Wait, I have something in the pack!"

He threw the cinch ropes free from the mule, pulled out the sacks of flour and bacon and coffee. "Here we are." He drew out the only can of beans and punctured the end with his knife.

"If you will satisfy your thirst with that juice, I'll catch the trickle down the rock while we rest; but you must never drink this alkali sink stuff."

Leaving the horses nuzzling the muddy pool, the Ranger stuck his jack knife into a crevice of the ledge and hung the small kettle where it would catch the drip. Matthews was examining the tracks.

"Not more than an hour or two old, an' A'm thinking, Wayland, we've fooled them out of water!"

"They'll keep to the shelter of the cutway long as this dust storm lasts."

Wayland was following down the tracks.

The sun had sunk behind the silver strip of mountain reddening the heat lakes and the Desert air. Across the mesas, the silt dust and sand drift still whirled in fitful gusts; but the air no longer carried the scorch of burning oil. The sky that had blazed all day in fiery brass darkened and closed near to earth, a throbbing thing of the Desert night brooding over life: a oneness of space rimmed round by the red sky line.

"Hullo," exclaimed Wayland, pointing to the bank. "We are not so far behind: there is the freshly opened cache."

Where the cutway caved to a hollow lay a hole littered with empty cans and canvas bags.

"Not much value left, eh? Hold on, Wayland, this might be useful." Matthews had picked up a skin water bag. It was full of tepid water.

"They're harder pressed than I thought. They've had water stored here. They'll rest somewhere in the cutway to-night. We'll likely run them down before morning if our horses can stand it."

Back at the rock, the Ranger was cooking their supper over a fire of withered moss and pinon chips, keeping the old man's mind off his fevered thirst by calling attention to the tricks of Desert growth to save water.

"You see the cactus turns its leaves into water vats with spikes to keep intruders off; and the greasewood stops evaporation by a varnish of gum. I'm sun-veneered all right. I don't sweat all my moisture out—"

"Better varnish me, then, before ye take me out again."

Less than a pint of water had seeped into the little kettle; and this they used for their tea, mixing the flour with the stale water from the mud pool. Then, they lighted pipes and lay back to rest.

Wayland had placed the kettle back under the drip of the ledge.

"A can understand Moses smitin' the rocks for a spring; and such a wind as we had to-day blowin' the Red Sea dry," observed the old man dreamily.

"I guess if you get any miracle down to close quarters, you'll sort it out all right without busting common sense," returned Wayland.

He wasn't thinking of the day's hardships.

The silver strip of the far mountains had faded; first, the purple base; then, the melting opal summit. At last, the restless wind had sunk. The red rocks of the mesa darkened to spectral shapes. The heat, the scorch, the torrid pain of the day had calmed to the soft velvet caress of the indigo Desert night. Twice, the Ranger dozed off to wake with a start, with a sense of her hand warning danger. Always before, the thought of her had come in an involuntary consciousness whelmed of happiness; but to-night, was it . . . fear?

He rose and looked about. Two of the horses lay at rest. The mule stood munching near. The old frontiersman slept heavily, his face troubled and upturned to the sky. Wayland noticed the livid tinge of the lips, the shadows round the eye sockets, the protuberance of veins on the backs of the old man's hands. The sky seemed to come down lower as the red twilight darkened; and he could hear not a sound but the crunch of the grazing mule and the slow drop, drop, drop of the water seeping from the terra cotta ledge. The stars were beginning to prick through the indigo darkness. In another hour, it would be bright enough to travel by starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest, slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick scurrying on again; then a hand touched him! Wayland sprang to his feet half asleep. He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the form faded. The pack mule had flounced up with a cough. A white horse stood between the banks of the arroyo. There was a steel flash in the dark, the rip of a quick shot, and the kettle bounced from the ledge with a jangling spill.

"What's that?" yelled the old frontiersman, jumping for the horses.

Wayland was pumping his repeater into the darkness; but the clatter of hoof beats down the dry gravel bed answered the question.

"It's the signal for us to get up," answered the Ranger. "I don't mind the blackguard's bad aim so much as I do the upset of that kettle. Every drop of water is spilled."

"A'm thinkin' 'twas the kettle they aimed at, and not us, my boy!"



CHAPTER XVI

BITTER WATERS

But for all that the outlaws seemed hard pressed, they succeeded in keeping ahead. The velvet dark of the night in the arroyo had given place to a sickly saffron dawn. Where the cut-way widened and lost itself in an alkali sink, the hoof prints of the fugitives' horses led out again to the open country of gray torrid earth dotted by sage brush and greasewood. The yellow sky met the ochre panting earth in a tremulous heat mist of wavering purple; and against that sky line, a swirl of dust marked the receding figures of the riders.

"There they go, Wayland! It's a case of who lasts out now! If we can only keep pushing them ahead, this heat wull do the rest."

The old man shaded his eyes as he gazed across the desert dawn.

"Queer way y'r mountains here keep shiftin' an' mufflin' an' meltin' their lines! They're here one minute about a mile away, then as you look, they've a trick of movin' back! That dust against the sky line is about ten miles off as A make it in this high rare air; an' they're goin' mighty slow! We've played 'em out."

"Yes; but they have played us out! Let us get off and have breakfast. If that small wren coming out of the cactus could speak, it might tell us where to find water."

They had camped one noon hour at a Desert pool beneath a cottonwood, where the putrid carcass of a dead ox polluted air and water. The Ranger whittled the cottonwood branches for a small chip fire, and he boiled enough water to fill the skin bag for the next day's travel; but a high wind was blowing, restless, nagging, gusty, pelting ash dust in their eyes, and not to lose the trail, they had pressed on through the sweltering heat of mid-day. Wayland's muscles had begun to feel hardened to the dryness of knotted whip cords. His skin had bronzed swarthy as an Indian's. He was beginning to rejoice in the vast spacious relentless Desert with its fierce struggle of life against death; the cactus, the greasewood, the brittle sage brush, all matching themselves against the heat-death. Was there a thing, beast or bush, not armed with the fangs of protection and onslaught? Wayland looked at his leather coat. It had been jagged to tatters by thorn and spine. Silent, too; the struggle was silent and insidious and crafty as death. Who could guess where the water-pools lay beneath the dry gravel beds; or why the cactus fortified its storage of moisture in bristling spear points; the greasewood and pinon with thorns and resin; the sage brush with a dull gray varnish that imprisoned evaporation? The very crust above the earth of ash and silt conspired to hide the trail of wolf and cougar; and wolf and cougar, wren and condor, masked in colors that hid their presence. Twice Wayland had almost stumbled on a wolf sitting motionless, gray as the ash, watching the horsemen pass; pass where? Was it down the Long Trail where the tracks all point one way? Yet the fierceness, the craft, the relentless cruelty of the silent struggle matched his own mood. He felt the stimulus of the high dry sun-fused tireless air. He began to understand why the Desert prophets of the East, who camped on sand plains rimmed round and round by an unbroken sky line, had been the first of the human race to grasp the idea of the Oneness of God. And was it not the Desert prophets, who had preached a God relentless as he was merciful; and the retribution that was fire? Well, Wayland ruminated, who should say that they were wrong? If the God who created the Desert, was the God of life; but there, his thought had been broken by coming on the withered carcass beside the yellow pool.

"They can't keep going on in this heat! We'll run 'em down if we can only keep going," Wayland had said; as they set out again in the blistering wind; but to his dying day, he will never forget the traverse of the Desert in that mid-day sun. To his dying day he will never see the spectrum colors of white light split by a prism, or the spectrum colors of a child's soap bubble, without living over the tortures of that afternoon, for the air, whipped to dust by the hurricane wind, acted as a prism splitting the white flame of light to lurid reds and oranges and yellows and violets.

Now, on this second morning before the stars had faded to the orange sunrise coming up through the lavender air in a half fan, the heat had thrown riders and horses in a sweltering sweat; and the nagging wind had begun driving ash dust in eyes and skin like pepper on a raw sore. Matthews' ruddy face had turned livid; his blood-shot eyes were dark ringed. The horses travelled with heads hung low. Spite of the sun, it was a cloudy sky, but whether rain clouds or dust clouds, they could not tell. Towards noon, they could see against the purple mountains the red tinged clouds fraying out to a fringe that swept the sky.

"A thought it never rained in the Desert in summer, Wayland?"

"It doesn't."

"What's that ahead?"

"Rain; but if you look again, you'll see it doesn't reach the sky line! It's sucked up and evaporated before it hits the dust. . . ."

Towards the middle of the afternoon, the horses were resting in the shade of a reddish butte. Both men had dismounted. Wayland did not notice what was happening till he glanced where the blue shadow of the rock met the wavering glare of the sand. The old man had stooped to one knee and had twice laved his hand down to the wavering margin of blue light and bluer shadows.

"Fooled you again, did it?' asked the Ranger, throwing the saddle from his own pony, strapping the cased rifle to his shoulder and carrying the hatchet in the crook of his elbow.

"Better let me give you a drink from the water bag; it's hot and stale; but it will keep you from seeing water at your feet till we find another spring."

The old man drank from the neck of the water bag and wiped his mouth with his hand.

"Queer effect y'r heat has on a North man, Wayland! D' y' know what A'd be doing if A let myself?"

"Drinking those blue shadows again?"

"No, sir, A'd be babbling and babbling about the sea! A fall asleep as we ride; an' when A wake from a doze, 'tisn't the sea of sand, 'tis the sea o' water that's about me! The yellow sea o' York Fort up Hudson Bay way where A took the boats from Saskatchewan."

Wayland helped him to mount.

"Aren't y' goin' to ride y'rself?"

"No," answered Wayland. "I'm going to keep one horse fresh. Best this one to-day: then we'll change off and rest yours to-morrow. Those fellows can't go any faster than we do. This heat will beat them out if we can't. I'll make those blackguards glad to drink horse-blood."

Then, they moved forward again, Wayland leading on foot, the little pack mule to the rear, both horses stumbling clumsily, raising clouds of dust; breathing hard, with heaving flanks.

That night, they halted in broken country . . . more red buttes; hummocks of red; silt crust trenched by the crumbly cutways of spring freshets; sand hills billowing to a brick red sky, where the sun hung a dull blaze. There were tracks of the fleeing drovers having paused for a rest in the same place. It was a pebble bottom hot and dry. Wayland scooped under with his Service axe and an ooze of clay water seeped slowly up forming a brackish pool. He had to hold the little mule back from fighting the horses for that water. When the animals had drunk, he filled the water bag with the settlings. Towards three in the morning, the soft velvet pansy blue Desert dark broke to a sulphur mist. Wayland saddled horses and mule and wakened the old frontiersman.

"Eh, where's this?" He came to himself heavily. "Wayland, is this hell-broth of a sulphur stew doin' me? Has y'r Desert got me, Wayland?"

"No, sir, when the Desert gets you, it gets you raving mad with fever. Chains won't hold you! This soggy sleep is all right. Long as you sleep, you'll keep your head!"

All the same, the Ranger noticed that the old man ate scarcely any breakfast. For those people who think that the Ranger's life consists of an easy all day jog-trot, it would be well to set down exactly of what that breakfast consisted. It consisted of slap jacks made with water sediment. Both men were afraid to draw on the water from the skin bag for tea.