Basin, they said, and about to cross into the Bitter Creek Plains,
which, according to the talk, were "a damned sight wuss!" Somewhere in the
Bitter Creek Plains our course met the course of the Overland Stage road,
trending up from the south for the passage of the Green River at the
farther edge of the Plains.

I had only faint hope that Mrs. Montoyo would be delivered over to the
stage there. It scarcely would be her wish. We were destined to travel on
to Salt Lake City together--she, Daniel and I.

If the Red Basin had been bad and if the Bitter Creek Plains were to be
worse, assuredly this plateau was limbo: a gray, bleak, wind-swept
elevation fairly level and extending, in elevation perceptible mainly by
the vista, as far as eye might see, northward and southward, separating
basin from basin--one Hell, as Jenks declared, from the other.

Nevertheless there was a wild grandeur in the site, flooded all with
crimson as the sun sank in the clear western sky beyond the Plains
themselves, so that our plateau was still bathed in ruddy color when the
Red Basin upon the one hand had deepened to purple and the white blotches
of soda and alkali down in the Plains upon the other hand gleamed evilly
in a tenuous gloaming.

We had corralled adjacent to another tainted pond, of which the animals
refused to drink but which furnished a little rank forage for them and an
oasis for a half dozen ducks. A pretty picture these made, too, as they
lightly sat the open water, burnished to brass by the sunset so that the
surface shimmered iridescent, its ripples from the floating bodies flowing
molten in all directions.

After supper I took the notion to go over there, in the twilight, on idle
exploration. Water of any kind had an appeal; a solitary pond always has;
the ducks brought thoughts of home. Many a teal and widgeon and canvasback
had fallen to my double-barreled Manton, back on the Atlantic coast--very
long ago, before I had got entangled in this confounded web of
misadventure and homicidal tendencies.

To the pond I went, mood subdued. It set slightly in a cup; and when I had
emerged from a little swale or depression that I had followed, attracted
by the laughter of children playing at the marge, whom should I see,
approaching on line diagonal, but Mrs. Montoyo--her very hair and
form--coming in likewise, perhaps with errand similar to mine: simple
inclination.

And that (again perhaps) was a mutual surprise, indeed awkwar