ntolerant glances. When his gaze finally focused on the object
which had frightened his pony, he showed no surprise. Many times
during the past two days had this incident occurred, and at no time had
Calumet allowed the pony to follow its inclination to bolt or swerve
from the trail. He held it steady now, pulling with a vicious hand on
the reins.

Ten feet in front of the pony and squarely in the center of the trail a
gigantic diamond-back rattler swayed and warned, its venomous, lidless
eyes gleaming with hate. Calumet's snarl deepened, he dug a spur into
the pony's left flank, and pulled sharply on the left rein. The pony
lunged, swerved, and presented its right shoulder to the swaying
reptile, its flesh quivering from excitement. Then the heavy revolver
in Calumet's hand roared spitefully, there was a sudden threshing in
the dust of the trail, and the huge rattler shuddered into a sinuous,
twisting heap. For an instant Calumet watched it, and then, seeing
that the wound he had inflicted was not mortal, he urged the pony
forward and, leaning over a little, sent two more bullets into the body
of the snake, severing its head from its body.

"Man's size," declared Calumet, his snarl relaxing. He sat erect and
spoke to the pony:

"Get along, you damned fool! Scared of a side-winder!"

Relieved, deflating its lungs with a tremulous heave, and unmindful of
Calumet's scorn, the pony gingerly returned to the trail. In thirty
seconds it had resumed its drooping shuffle, in thirty seconds Calumet
had returned to his unpleasant ruminations.

A mile up in the shimmering white of the desert sky an eagle swam on
slow wing, shaping his winding course toward the timber clump that
fringed a river. Besides the eagle, the pony, and Calumet, no living
thing stirred in the desert or above it. In the shade of a rock,
perhaps, lurked a lizard, in the filmy mesquite that drooped and curled
in the stifling heat slid a rattler, in the shelter of the sagebrush
the sage hen might have nestled her eggs in the hot sand. But these
were fixtures. Calumet, his pony, and the eagle, were not. The eagle
was Mexican; it had swung its mile-wide circles many times to reach the
point above the timber clump; it was migratory and alert with the
hunger lust.

Calumet watched it with eyes that glowed bitterly and balefully. Half
an hour later, when he reached the river and the pony clattered down
the rocky slope, plunged its head deeply