ilent, and seemed consumed by a slow, sullen rage. Gale
was neither calm nor free of a gnawing suspense nor of a waiting wrath.
But as best he could he put the pending action out of mind.

It came over him all of a sudden that he had not grasped the stupendous
nature of this desert setting. There was the measureless red slope,
its lower ridges finally sinking into white sand dunes toward the blue
sea. The cold, sparkling light, the white sun, the deep azure of sky,
the feeling of boundless expanse all around him--these meant high
altitude. Southward the barren red simply merged into distance. The
field of craters rose in high, dark wheels toward the dominating peaks.
When Gale withdrew his gaze from the magnitude of these spaces and
heights the crater beneath him seemed dwarfed. Yet while he gazed it
spread and deepened and multiplied its ragged lines. No, he could not
grasp the meaning of size or distance here. There was too much to stun
the sight. But the mood in which nature had created this convulsed
world of lava seized hold upon him.

Meanwhile the hours passed. As the sun climbed the clear, steely
lights vanished, the blue hazes deepened, and slowly the glistening
surfaces of lava turned redder. Ladd was concerned to discover that
Yaqui was missing from his outlook upon the high point. Jim Lash came
out of the shady crevice, and stood up to buckle on his cartridge belt.
His narrow, gray glance slowly roved from the height of lava down along
the slope, paused in doubt, and then swept on to resurvey the whole
vast eastern dip of the plateau.

"I reckon my eyes are pore," he said. "Mebbe it's this damn red glare.
Anyway, what's them creepin' spots up there?"

"Shore I seen them. Mountain sheep," replied Ladd.

"Guess again, Laddy. Dick, I reckon you'd better flash the glass up
the slope."

Gale adjusted the field glass and began to search the lava, beginning
close at hand and working away from him. Presently the glass became
stationary.

"I see half a dozen small animals, brown in color. They look like
sheep. But I couldn't distinguish mountain sheep from antelope."

"Shore they're bighorn," said Laddy.

"I reckon if you'll pull around to the east an' search under that long
wall of lava--there--you'll see what I see," added Jim.

The glass climbed and circled, wavered an instant, then fixed steady as
a rock. There was a breathless silence.

"Fourteen horses--two packed--some mounted--o