ad no stomach for the tea and damper
which had been left behind. It was unusual for him to be suffered to
take a meal unwatched; something unusual was in the air. Stingaree
emerged from the scrub leading the two horses. Vanheimert began to
figure the fate that might be in store for him. And the horses, saddled
and bridled before his eyes, were led over to where he sat.

"Are you going to shoot me before you go," he cried, "or are you going
to leave me to die alone?"

"Neither, here," said Stingaree. "We're too fond of the camp."

It was his first brutal speech, but the brutality was too subtle for
Vanheimert. He was beginning to feel that something dreadful might
happen to him after all. The pinions were removed from his arms and
legs, the long rope detached from the tree and made fast to one of
Stingaree's stirrups instead. And by it Vanheimert was led a good mile
through the scrub, with Howie at his heels.

A red sun had risen on the camp, but in the scrub it ceased to shine,
and the first open space was as sunless as the dense bush. Spires of
sand kept whirling from earth to sky, joining other spinning spires,
forming a monster balloon of yellow sand, a balloon that swelled until
it burst, obscuring first the firmament and then the earth. But the mind
of Vanheimert was so busy with the fate he feared that he did not
realize he was in another dust-storm until Stingaree, at the end of the
rope, was swallowed like a tug in a fog. And even then Vanheimert's
peculiar terror of a dust-storm did not link itself to the fear of
sudden death which had at last been put into him. But the moment of
mental enlightenment was at hand.

The rope trailed on the ground as Stingaree loomed large and yellow
through the storm. He had dropped his end. Vanheimert glanced over his
shoulder, and Howie loomed large and yellow behind him.

"You will now perceive the reason for so many days' delay," said
Stingaree. "I have been waiting for such a dust-storm as the one from
which we saved you, to be rewarded as you endeavored to reward me. You
might, perhaps, have preferred me to make shorter work of you, but on
consideration you will see that this is not only just but generous. The
chances are perhaps against you, and somewhat in favor of a more
unpleasant death; but it is quite possible that the storm may pass
before it finishes you, and that you may then hit the fence before you
die of thirst, and at the worst we leave you no worse off t