t? Can we get to that water-hole in half an hour? Let's
try for it, old fellow, and then we'll have a good drink, and a bite to
eat, and maybe ten minutes for a nap before we take the short trail
home. There's some of the corn chop left for you, Billy, so hustle up,
old boy, and get there."

Billy, with an answering snort, responded to his master's words, and
carefully picked his way over boulders and rocks down to the valley
below.

But within a half mile of the water-hole the young man suddenly halted
his horse and sprang from the saddle, stooping in the sand beside a tall
yucca to pick up something that gleamed like fire in the sunlight. In
all that brilliant glowing landscape a bit of brightness had caught his
eye and insistently flung itself upon his notice as worthy of
investigation. There was something about the sharp light it flung that
spoke of another world than the desert. John Brownleigh could not pass
it by. It might be only a bit of broken glass from an empty flask flung
carelessly aside, but it did not look like that. He must see.

Wondering he stooped and picked it up, a bit of bright gold on the
handle of a handsome riding whip. It was not such a whip as people in
this region carried; it was dainty, costly, elegant, a lady's riding
whip! It spoke of a world of wealth and attention to expensive details,
as far removed from this scene as possible. Brownleigh stood still in
wonder and turned the pretty trinket over in his hand. Now how did that
whip come to be lying in a bunch of sage-brush on the desert? Jewelled,
too, and that must have given the final keen point of light to the flame
which made him stop short in the sand to pick it up. It was a single
clear stone of transparent yellow, a topaz likely, he thought, but
wonderfully alive with light, set in the end of the handle, and looking
closely he saw a handsome monogram engraved on the side, and made out
the letters H. R. But that told him nothing.

With knit brows he pondered, one foot in the stirrup, the other still
upon the desert, looking at the elegant toy. Now who, _who_ would be so
foolish as to bring a thing like that into the desert? There were no
lady riders anywhere about that he knew, save the major's sister at the
military station, and she was most plain in all her appointments. This
frivolous implement of horsemanship never belonged to the major's
sister. Tourists seldom came this way. What did it mean?

He sprang into the saddle an