direct the man back in the Pass; they don't believe he's dead."

The Ranger took it back and read it over. "If they're lagging back for
the missing man, why didn't they leave a message sooner? Trail doesn't
fork here. Why did they leave word here?"

"There really is a railway somewhere here, Wayland?"

"There must be if one knew where to find it."

Matthews smiled. "Then, A take it this is a gentle hint to go off and
lose ourselves trying to find it."

Wayland's eyes rested on the slow-moving dust cloud against the horizon.

"Then it is a case of who lasts out!" He looked at his white haired
companion. "But there's no call for you to risk _your_ life on the
last lap of the race. It's not your job. It means another day;
perhaps, two. If you'd take my horse, it's fresher, and the water bag,
you could ride out to the railroad to-night. Those fellows are not
good for many miles more unless they hit a spring. Let me go on alone,
sir."

"Alone?" The old man's face flushed furious, livid. . . . "Git epp!"

Up a sand bluff, heaving to the heat waves; down a slither of ash dust;
then, across the petrified black lava roll; down to a saline sink,
white and blistering to the sight; over a silt bank crumbly as flour;
and on and yet on; across the dusty sage-smelling parched plain . . .
they moved; always following the tracks; tracks confused and doubling
back as if the hind horse lagged; with blood drip and shuffling
dragging hoofs; always keeping the dust whirl of the fore horizon in
view; on and on, but speaking scarcely at all!

The Ranger again had that curious sensation of the earth slipping away
from his foot steps. He had thrown away his leather coat early in the
morning. Now be found himself tearing off the loose red tie round the
flannel collar of the Service suit; and he pulled himself sharply
together recognizing the fevered instinct to strip off all hampering
clothing. It was as much a heat-death symptom as sleep forbodes frost
death. He did not walk in a daze as the old man rode, half numbness,
half drowse. He walked with a throb--throb--throb in his temples like
the fall of water. He wanted to run; to strip himself as an athlete
for a race; and all the time, he kept walking as if the heaving earth
went writhing away from each step.

"Don't y' think ye better open that pack, an' get a drink for y'rself,
my boy?"

Wayland was pausing in the shadow of a sand butte, and the old man had
rid