and at
the same time laying bare; and when a sand storm came on he could lose
his tracks half an hour after they were made. It was a big country, and
wild, no man lived there for sixty miles--they could fight it out,
alone.

From Emigrant Spring, where he camped after dark, Wunpost rode out
before dawn and was well clear of the hills before it was light enough
to shoot. The broad bulwark of Tucki Mountain, rising up on his right,
might give a last shelter to his enemy; but now he was in the open with
Emigrant Wash straight ahead and Death Valley lying white beyond. And
over beyond that, like a wall of layer cake, rose the striated
buttresses of the Grapevines. Wunpost passed down over the road up which
the Nevada rush had come when he had made his great strike at Black
Point; and as he rollicked along on his fast-walking mule, with the two
pack-animals following behind, something rose up within him to tell him
the world was good and that a lucky star was leading him on.

He was heading across the Valley to the Grapevine Range, and the hateful
imp of evil which had dogged him through the Panamints would have to
come down and leave a trail. And once he found his tracks Wunpost would
know who he was fighting, and he could govern himself accordingly. If it
was an Indian, well and good; if it was Lynch, still well and good; but
no man can be brave when he is fighting in the dark or fleeing from an
unseen hand. From their lookouts on the heights his enemies could see
him traveling and trace him with their glasses all day; but when night
fell they would lose him, and then someone would have to descend and
pick up his trail in the sands.

Wunpost camped that evening at Surveyor's Well, a trench-hole dug down
into the Sink, and after his mules had eaten their fill of salt-grass he
packed up again and pushed on to the east. From the stinking alkali flat
with its mesquite clumps and sacaton, he passed on up an interminable
wash; and at daylight he was hidden in the depths of a black canyon
which ended abruptly behind him. There was no way to reach him, or even
see where he was hid, except by following up the canyon; and before he
went to sleep Wunpost got out his two bear-traps and planted them
hurriedly in the trail. Then, retiring into a cave, he left Good Luck on
guard and slept until late in the day. But nothing stirred down the
trail, his watch-dog was silent--he was hidden from all the world.

That evening just at dusk