rs traveling slow; bothered by too many horses, not looking
for pursuit; were never pursued, could be headed and ambushed that
night at the first waterhole, a natural trap in a valley.

The men returned to the ranch. The rangers ate and drank while making
hurried preparations for travel. Blanco Sol and the cowboys' horses
were fed, watered, and saddled. Ladd again refused to ride one of
Belding's whites. He was quick and cold.

"Get me a long-range rifle an' lots of shells. Rustle now," he said.

"Laddy, you don't want to be weighted down?" protested Belding.

"Shore I want a gun that'll outshoot the dinky little carbines an'
muskets used by the rebels. Trot one out an' be quick."

"I've got a .405, a long-barreled heavy rifle that'll shoot a mile. I
use it for mountain sheep. But Laddy, it'll break that bronch's back."

"His back won't break so easy.... Dick, take plenty of shells for your
Remington. An' don't forget your field glass."

In less than an hour after the time of the raid the three rangers,
heavily armed and superbly mounted on fresh horses, rode out on the
trail. As Gale turned to look back from the far bank of Forlorn River,
he saw Nell waving a white scarf. He stood high in his stirrups and
waved his sombrero. Then the mesquites hid the girl's slight figure,
and Gale wheeled grim-faced to follow the rangers.

They rode in single file with Ladd in the lead. He did not keep to the
trail of the raiders all the time. He made short cuts. The raiders
were traveling leisurely, and they evinced a liking for the most level
and least cactus-covered stretches of ground. But the cowboy took a
bee-line course for the white escarpment pointed out by the Yaqui; and
nothing save deep washes and impassable patches of cactus or rocks made
him swerve from it. He kept the broncho at a steady walk over the
rougher places and at a swinging Indian canter over the hard and level
ground. The sun grew hot and the wind began to blow. Dust clouds
rolled along the blue horizon. Whirling columns of sand, like water
spouts at sea, circled up out of white arid basins, and swept away and
spread aloft before the wind. The escarpment began to rise, to change
color, to show breaks upon its rocky face.

Whenever the rangers rode out on the brow of a knoll or ridge or an
eminence, before starting to descend, Ladd required of Gale a long,
careful, sweeping survey of the desert ahead through the field glass.
There we