monstrated Curly; "can't you get tired enough to
be decent? Git on away--_vamos_!"

He stripped off the bridle from Pinto's head, and again gave him a
friendly slap, as he drove him off to graze, without any precaution to
prevent his running away. As for himself, Curly lay down upon the
ground, his face on his arm, and was soon fast asleep in the glaring
sun. Pinto, misanthropic as he was, did not abuse the confidence
reposed in him. He walked off to a trickle of water which came down
from a mountain spring, and grazed steadily upon the coarse mountain
grass, but every now and then, under the strange bond which sometimes
exists between horse and man, wandered around to look inquiringly at his
sleeping master, whom he would gladly have brained upon occasion, but
upon whom, none the less, he relied blindly.

There were long shadows slanting toward the eastward when Curly arose
and again saddled up his misfit mount. He knew that the buckboard was
well in advance of him in time, but it must take the longer wagon trail
to the westward of Sky Top, while for himself there were shorter paths
across the mountains. He rode on until night fell, and the moon arose,
flooding all the mountain range with wondrous silvery light, which grew
the plainer as he left the whispering pines and came into the dwindled
pinons of the lower levels. Then up and down, over and over, he crossed
the edges of other spurs, coming down from the great backbone of the
range. It was past midnight when he reached the flat-topped mesa near
the Nogales divide, where there were no trees at all, and where ancient
pottery, relics of a forgotten Heart's Desire of another race and time,
crumbled beneath his horse's hoofs. Here Curly loosened the saddle
cinches, flung down the bridle-rein over Pinto's head again, and himself
lay down to sleep, uncovered, but hardy as any mountain bear that roamed
the hills.

When he awoke the red sun hung poised on the shoulder of Blanco, far
away, as though to receive the ghostly worship of those who once lived
and loved, and prayed here, in the long ago. So now he ate as he might,
and drank at the Rio Bonito, a dozen miles farther on, and went his way
comforted.

Dropping down rapidly on the farther side of the Nogales, Pinto
shambling along discontentedly but steadily, Curly at length came to the
wagon trail which led along the edge of the plain on the western side of
these ranges which he had threaded. He leaned f