wn the sand was still hot from the sun of the evening before; the low
air seemed to suffocate him with its below-sea-level pressure, and the
salt marshes to give off stinking gases; it was a hell-hole, even then,
and the day was yet to come, when the Valley would make life a torment.

The white borax-flats would reflect a blinding light, the briny marshes
would seethe in the sun; and every rock, every sand-dune, would radiate
more heat to add to the flame in the sky. Wunpost knew it well, the
long-enduring agony which would be his lot that day; but he moved about
briskly, bailing the slime from the well and sinking it deeper into the
sand. He doused his body into the water and let his pores drink, and
threw buckets of it on his beseeching mules; but only after the
well-hole had been scraped and bailed twice would he permit them to
drink the brackish water. Then he tied them in the shade of the wilting
mesquite trees and strode to the top of the hill.

A man, perforce, takes on the color of his surroundings, and Wunpost was
coated white from the crystallized salt and baked black underneath by
the glare; but the look in his eyes was as savage and implacable as that
of a devil from hell. He sat down on the point and focussed his glasses
on Poison Spring, and then on the trail beyond; and at last, out on the
marshes, he saw an object that moved--it was Pisen-face Lynch and his
horse. The horse was in the lead, picking his way along a trail which
led across the Sink towards the Ranch; and Lynch was behind, following
feebly and sinking down, then springing up again and struggling on. His
way led over hummocks of solid salt, across mud-holes and
borax-encrusted flats; and far to the south another form moved towards
him--it was the Indian, riding out to bring him in.

The sun swung up high, striking through Wunpost's thin shirt like the
blast from a furnace door; sweat rolled down his face, to be sopped up
by the bath-towel which he wore draped about his neck; but he sat on his
hilltop, grim as a gargoyle on Notre Dame, gloating down on the
suffering man. This was Pisen-face Lynch, the bad man from Bodie, who
was going to trail him to his mine; this was Eells' hired man-killer and
professional claim-jumper who had robbed him of the Wunpost and Willie
Meena--and now he was a derelict, lost on the desert he claimed to know,
following along behind his half-dead horse; and but for the Indian who
was coming out to meet him he would