Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
By Rex Beach
Author of "THE SILVER HORDE" "THE SPOILERS" "THE IRON TRAIL" Etc.
A fitful breeze played among the mesquite bushes. The naked earth,where it showed between the clumps of grass, was baked plaster hard. Itburned like hot slag, and except for a panting lizard here and there,or a dust-gray jack-rabbit, startled from its covert, nothing animatestirred upon its face. High and motionless in the blinding sky abuzzard poised; long-tailed Mexican crows among the thorny branchescreaked and whistled, choked and rattled, snored and grunted; a dovemourned inconsolably, and out of the air issued metallic insectcries—the direction whence they came as unascertainable as theirsource was hidden.
Although the sun was half-way down the west, its glare remaineduntempered, and the tantalizing shade of the sparse mesquite was moreof a trial than a comfort to the lone woman who, refusing its deceitfulinvitation, plodded steadily over the waste. Stop, indeed, she darednot. In spite of her fatigue, regardless of the torture from feet andlimbs unused to walking, she must, as she constantly assured herself,keep going until strength failed. So far, fortunately, she had kept herhead, and she retained sufficient reason to deny the fancifulapprehensions which clamored for audience. If she once allowed herselfto become panicky, she knew, she would fare worse—far worse—and now,if ever, she needed all her faculties. Somewhere to the northward,perhaps a mile, perhaps a league distant, lay the water-hole.
But the country was of a deadly and a deceitful sameness, devoid oflandmarks and lacking well-defined water-courses. The unending mesquitewith its first spring foliage resembled a lim