p and ride along," said Mrs. Webber, with a little jerk at
the handles of her chair; "you always fussin' 'bout my readin'. I do
a-plenty; and I'll read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like a
varmint, never seein' nor hearin' nothin', and what other 'musement kin
I have? Not in listenin' to you talk, for it's complain, complain, one
day after another. Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace."

Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and "shoved" down the wagon
trail that connected his ranch with the old, open Government road. It
was eight o'clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He should
have started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only eighteen
miles away, but there was a road for only three miles of the distance.
He had ridden over there once with one of the Half-Moon cowpunchers,
and he had the direction well-defined in his mind.

Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and
struck down the arroyo of the Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch
of smiling valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite
grass; and Mexico consumed those few miles quickly with his long, easy
lope. Again, upon reaching Wild Duck Waterhole, must he abandon
well-defined ways. He turned now to his right up a little hill,
pebble-covered, upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny prickly
pear and chaparral. At the summit of this he paused to take his last
general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through
brakes and thickets of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part
seeing scarcely farther than twenty yards in any direction, choosing
his way by the prairie-dweller's instinct, guided only by an occasional
glimpse of a far distant hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or
the position of the sun.

Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat
that lies between the Quintanilla and the Piedra.

In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual
confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was anxious
to redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous
labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master's sureness of the
route had failed his horse had divined the fact. There were no hills
now that they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They came
upon a few, but so dense and interlaced was the brush that scarcely
could a rabbit penetrate the mass. They were in th