at very night, for
water had been splashed about the hole; but whoever it was, was gone.
Wunpost studied the unshod horse-track, then he began to cut circles in
the snow-white alkali and at last he sat down to await the dawn. There
was something eerie about this pursuit, if pursuit it was, for while the
horse had been watered from the bucket at the well, its rider had not
left a track. Not a heel-mark, not a nail-point, and the last of the
water had been dropped craftily on the spot where he had mounted. That
was enough--Wunpost knew he had met his match. He watered his mules
again, rode west into the mesquite brush and at sun-up he was hid for
the day.

Where three giant mesquite trees, their tops reared high in the air and
their trunks banked up with sand, sprawled together to make a natural
barricade, Wunpost unpacked his mules and tied them there to browse
while he climbed to the top of a mound. The desert was quite bare as far
as he could see--no horseman came or went, every distant trail was
empty, the way to Tank Canyon was untrod. And yet somewhere there must
be a man and a horse--a very ordinary horse, such as any man might have,
and a man who wiped out his tracks. Wunpost lay there a long time,
sweeping the washes with his glasses, and then a shadow passed over him
and was gone. He jumped and a glossy raven, his head turned to one side,
gave vent to a loud, throaty _quawk_! His mate followed behind him,
her wings rustling noisily, her beady eye fixed on his camp, and Wunpost
looked up and cursed back at them.

If the ravens on the mountain had made out his hiding-place and come
down from their crags to look, what was to prevent this man who smoothed
out his tracks from detecting his hidden retreat? Wunpost knew the
ravens well, for no man ever crossed Death Valley without hearing the
whish of black wings, but he wondered now if this early morning visit
did not presage disaster to come. What the ravens really sought for he
knew all too well, for he had seen their knotted tracks by dead forms;
yet somehow their passage conjured up thoughts in his brain which had
never disturbed him before. They were birds of death, rapacious and
evil-bringing, and they had cast their boding shadows upon him.

The dank coolness of the morning gave place to ardent midday before he
crept down and gave up his watch, but as he crouched beneath the trees
another shadow passed over him and cast a slow circle through the brush.
It wa