eful to the proud and haughty spirit of Blanco Diablo.
For once Belding's great white devil had met his master. He fought
rider, bit, bridle, cactus, sand--and yet he went on and on,
zigzagging, turning, winding, crashing through the barbed growths. The
middle of the afternoon saw Thorne reeling in his saddle, and then,
wherever possible, Gale's powerful arm lent him strength to hold his
seat.

The giant cactus came to be only so in name. These saguaros were
thinning out, growing stunted, and most of them were single columns.
Gradually other cactus forms showed a harder struggle for existence,
and the spaces of sand between were wider. But now the dreaded,
glistening choya began to show pale and gray and white upon the rising
slope. Round-topped hills, sunset-colored above, blue-black below,
intervened to hide the distant spurs and peaks. Mile and mile long
tongues of red lava streamed out between the hills and wound down to
stop abruptly upon the slope.

The fugitives were entering a desolate, burned-out world. It rose
above them in limitless, gradual ascent and spread wide to east and
west. Then the waste of sand began to yield to cinders. The horses
sank to their fetlocks as they toiled on. A fine, choking dust blew
back from the leaders, and men coughed and horses snorted. The huge,
round hills rose smooth, symmetrical, colored as if the setting sun was
shining on bare, blue-black surfaces. But the sun was now behind the
hills. In between ran the streams of lava. The horsemen skirted the
edge between slope of hill and perpendicular ragged wall. This red
lava seemed to have flowed and hardened there only yesterday. It was
broken sharp, dull rust color, full of cracks and caves and crevices,
and everywhere upon its jagged surface grew the white-thorned choya.

Again twilight encompassed the travelers. But there was still light
enough for Gale to see the constricted passage open into a wide, deep
space where the dull color was relieved by the gray of gnarled and
dwarfed mesquite. Blanco Sol, keenest of scent, whistled his welcome
herald of water. The other horses answered, quickened their gait.
Gale smelled it, too, sweet, cool, damp on the dry air.

Yaqui turned the corner of a pocket in the lava wall. The file of
white horses rounded the corner after him. And Gale, coming last, saw
the pale, glancing gleam of a pool of water beautiful in the twilight.

Next day the Yaqui's relentless driving