at he would strike his old trail to Starvation
Mountain on the other side. From there to the summit he could make it by
noon on the morrow, he planned. Which would be the end of his preliminary
journey and the beginning of Casey's last drive toward his goal; for from
the top of the divide between Starvation Mountain country and that
forbidding waste which lies under the calm scrutiny of Furnace Peak he
could see the far-off range of the Tippipahs.

He was a mile out on the Lake when he first glimpsed the light. Casey
studied it while he walked ahead, leaving no footprints on the hard-baked
clay. He had not known that any road followed just under the crest of the
ridge that hid Crazy Woman lake, yet the light was plainly that of an
automobile moving with speed across the face of the ridge just under the
summit.

Away out in the empty land like that you notice little things and think
about them and try to understand just what they mean, unless they are
perfectly familiar to you. One print of a foot on the trail may betray the
lurking presence of a madman, a murderer, a traveling, friendly, desert
dweller or the wandering of some one who is lost and dying of thirst and
hunger. You like to know which, and you are not satisfied until you do
know.

A light moving swiftly along Crazy Woman ridge meant a car, and a car up
there meant a road. If there were a road it would probably lead Casey by a
shorter route to the Tippipahs. While he looked there came to his ears a
roaring, as of some high-powered car traveling under full pressure of
gas. The burros followed him, but William lifted his head and brayed
tremulously three times in the dark. Casey had never heard him bray
before, and the sudden rasping outcry startled him.

He went back and stood for a minute looking at William, who turned tail
and started back toward the shore they had left behind them. Casey ran to
head him off, yelling threats, and William, in spite of his six water
cans--two of them empty--broke into a lope. Casey glanced over his
shoulder as he ran and saw dimly that the burros had turned and were
coming after him, their ears flapping loosely on their bobbing heads as
they trotted. Beyond him, the light still traveled towards the Tippipahs.

Then, with an abruptness that cannot be pictured, everything was blotted
out in a great, blinding swirl of dust as the wind came whooping down upon
them. It threw Casey as though some one had tripped him. It spun hi