ches!"

Then up out of the gulf of the west swept a bellowing wind and a black
pall and terrible flashes of lightning and thunder like the end of the
world--fury, blackness, chaos, the desert storm.

XVII

THE WHISTLE OF A HORSE

AT the ranch-house at Forlorn River Belding stood alone in his darkened
room. It was quiet there and quiet outside; the sickening midsummer
heat, like a hot heavy blanket, lay upon the house.

He took up the gun belt from his table and with slow hands buckled it
around his waist. He seemed to feel something familiar and comfortable
and inspiring in the weight of the big gun against his hip. He faced
the door as if to go out, but hesitated, and then began a slow,
plodding walk up and down the length of the room. Presently he halted
at the table, and with reluctant hands he unbuckled the gun belt and
laid it down.

The action did not have an air of finality, and Belding knew it. He had
seen border life in Texas in the early days; he had been a sheriff when
the law in the West depended on a quickness of wrist; he had seen many
a man lay down his gun for good and all. His own action was not final.
Of late he had done the same thing many times and this last time it
seemed a little harder to do, a little more indicative of vacillation.
There were reasons why Belding's gun held for him a gloomy fascination.

The Chases, those grasping and conscienceless agents of a new force in
the development of the West, were bent upon Belding's ruin, and so far
as his fortunes at Forlorn River were concerned, had almost
accomplished it. One by one he lost points for which he contended with
them. He carried into the Tucson courts the matter of the staked
claims, and mining claims, and water claims, and he lost all.
Following that he lost his government position as inspector of
immigration; and this fact, because of what he considered its
injustice, had been a hard blow. He had been made to suffer a
humiliation equally as great. It came about that he actually had to
pay the Chases for water to irrigate his alfalfa fields. The
never-failing spring upon his land answered for the needs of household
and horses, but no more.

These matters were unfortunate for Belding, but not by any means wholly
accountable for his worry and unhappiness and brooding hate. He
believed Dick Gale and the rest of the party taken into the desert by
the Yaqui had been killed or lost. Two months before a string of
Mexic