ling, through which he
has thrust his head, leaving the long slender shanks, like the ends of
the letter X, projecting at each side and high above his shoulders.

Despite the load thus borne by him, the step of the ex-Ranger is no
longer that of a man either despairing or fatigued. On the contrary, it
is light and elastic; while his countenance shows bright and joyous as
the beams of the ascending sun. His very shadow seems to flit over the
frosted foliage of the artemisias as lightly as the figure of a
gossamer-robed belle gliding across the waxed floor of a ball-room.

Walt Wilder no longer hungers or thirsts. Though the carcase on his
back is still unskinned, a huge collop cut out of one of its
hind-quarters tells how he has satisfied the first craving; while the
gurgle of water, heard inside the canteen slung under his arm, proclaims
that the second has also been appeased.

He is now hastening on to the relief of his comrade, happy in the
thought of being able soon to relieve him also from his sufferings.

Striding lightly among the sage-bushes, and looking ahead for the
landmark that should guide him, he at length catches sight of it. The
palmilla, standing like a huge porcupine upon the plain, cannot be
mistaken; and he descries it at more than a mile's distance, the shadow
of his own head already flickering among its bayonet-like blades.

Just then something else comes under his eyes, which at once changes the
expression upon his countenance. From gay it grows grave, serious,
apprehensive. A flock of buzzards, seemingly scared by his shadow, have
suddenly flapped up from among the sage-plants, and are now soaring
around, close to the spikes of the palmilla. They have evidently been
down _upon the earth_. And what have they been doing there?

It is this question, mentally put by Walt Wilder, that has caused the
quick change in his countenance--the result of a painful conjecture.

"Marciful heavens!" he exclaims, suddenly making halt, the gun almost
dropping from his grasp. "Kin it be possyble? Frank Hamersley gone
under! Them buzzards! They've been upon the groun' to a sartinty.
Darnashin! what ked they a been doin' down thar? Right by the bunch o'
palmetto, jest whar I left him. An' no sign o' himself to be seen?
Marciful heavens! kin it be possyble they've been--?"

Interrupting himself, he remains motionless, apparently paralysed by
apprehension, mechanically scanning the palmilla, as thoug