k lee of the river bank Yaqui caused another halt,
and he disappeared as before. It seemed to Gale that the Indian
started to cross the pale level sandbed of the river, where stones
stood out gray, and the darker line of opposite shore was visible. But
he vanished, and it was impossible to tell whether he went one way or
another. Moments passed. The horses held heads up, looked toward the
glimmering campfires and listened. Gale thrilled with the meaning of it
all--the night--the silence--the flight--and the wonderful Indian
stealing with the slow inevitableness of doom upon another sentinel.
An hour passed and Gale seemed to have become deadened to all sense of
hearing. There were no more sounds in the world. The desert was as
silent as it was black. Yet again came that strange change in the
tensity of Gale's ear-strain, a check, a break, a vibration--and this
time the sound did not go nameless. It might have been moan of wind or
wail of far-distant wolf, but Gale imagined it was the strangling
death-cry of another guard, or that strange, involuntary utterance of
the Yaqui. Blanco Sol trembled in all his great frame, and then Gale
was certain the sound was not imagination.

That certainty, once for all, fixed in Gale's mind the mood of his
flight. The Yaqui dominated the horses and the rangers. Thorne and
Mercedes were as persons under a spell. The Indian's strange silence,
the feeling of mystery and power he seemed to create, all that was
incomprehensible about him were emphasized in the light of his slow,
sure, and ruthless action. If he dominated the others, surely he did
more for Gale--colored his thoughts--presage the wild and terrible
future of that flight. If Rojas embodied all the hatred and passion of
the peon--scourged slave for a thousand years--then Yaqui embodied all
the darkness, the cruelty, the white, sun-heated blood, the ferocity,
the tragedy of the desert.

Suddenly the Indian stalked out of the gloom. He mounted Diablo and
headed across the river. Once more the line of moving white shadows
stretched out. The soft sand gave forth no sound at all. The
glimmering campfires sank behind the western bank. Yaqui led the way
into the willows, and there was faint swishing of leaves; then into the
mesquite, and there was faint rustling of branches. The glimmering
lights appeared again, and grotesque forms of saguaros loomed darkly.
Gale peered sharply along the trail, and, presently, on the p