aid Eric.

Zurich answered as they saddled:

"If we had followed them in there, we would have lost forty miles. As it
is, they gain twenty miles on us while we ride back round the north end
of the mountain, besides an hour I lost hoofing it back."

"I don't see that we've lost much," said Jim Scarboro. "We've got their
direction and our horses are fresh beside of theirs. We'll make up that
twenty miles and be in at the finish to-morrow; we're four to four. Let's
ride."

Tall Eric rubbed his chin.

"That Benavides," he said, "is a tough one. He is a known man. He's as
good as Johnson when it comes to shooting."

"I'm not afraid of the shooting, and I'm not afraid of death," said
Zurich impatiently; "but I am leery about that cussed old man. He'll find
a way to fool us--see if he don't!"

* * * * *

A strong wind blew scorching from the south the next day; Johnson turned
aside from the sagebrush country to avoid the worst sand, and bent north
to a long half-circle, through a country of giant saguaro and clumped
yuccas; once they passed over a neck of lava hillocks thinly drifted over
with sand. The heat was ghastly; on their faces alkali dust, plastered
with sweat, caked in the stubble of two days' growth; their eyes were
red-rimmed and swollen. Boland, bruised and racked and cramped, suffered
agonies.

It was ten in the morning when Joe touched Pete's arm:

"_Que cosa?_" He pointed behind them and to the north, to a long,
low-lying streak of dust.

"Trouble, Don Hooaleece? I think so--yes."

They had no spyglass; but it was hardly needed. The dust streak followed
them, almost parallel to their course. It gained on them. They changed
their gait from a walk to a trot. The dust came faster; they were
pursued.

That was a weird race. There was no running, no galloping; only a steady,
relentless trot that jarred poor Boland to the bone. After an hour,
during which the pursuers gained steadily, Pete called a halt. They took
the packs from the led animals and turned them loose, to go back to
Fishhook Mountain; they refilled their canteens from the kegs and pressed
on. The pursuit had gained during the brief delay; plainly to be seen
now, queer little bobbing black figures against the north.

They rode on, a little faster now. But at the end of half an hour the
black figures were perceptibly closer.

"They're gaining on us," said Boland, turning his red-lidded eyes on
Stan. "The