the
boy partially covered by the desert's winding-sheet.

"You can talk of a gale at sea where the sailors are half drowned all
the time; but it ain't a marker alongside of these 'ere red-hot
blizzards, eh, Parsons?" one of the horsemen said as he threw off the
blanket from his head with a long-drawn sigh of relief.

"Drownin' must be mighty pleasant kind of fun alongside of chokin' to
death on account of bein' filled plum full with dry sand," Parsons
replied. "I allow there ain't no call for us to stay here braggin'
about our Nevada hurricanes, Tom Robinson, more especially since we'll
make less headway now the sand has been stirred up a bit."

"There's nothin' to hold me here," Robinson replied with a laugh.

Straightway the two men turned their ponies' heads toward the west;
and as they advanced the patient burros, laden with a miscellaneous
assortment of goods until little else than their heads and tails could
be seen, followed steadily in the rear.

Five minutes after they had resumed their journey Parsons cried, as he
raised himself in the stirrups, shading his eyes with his hands as he
peered ahead,--

"What's that 'ere bit of blue out there? Part of somebody's outfit? or
was there a shipwreck close at hand?"

"It's a man--most likely a tenderfoot, if he tried to walk across this
'ere desert."

The two halted, and Dick Stevens's life was saved.

Had the storm lasted two or three minutes longer, or these prospectors
gone in any other direction, he must have died where he had fallen.

Now he was dragged out from beneath the weight of sand, and laid upon
a blanket, while the men, knowing by experience what should be done in
such cases, set about restoring the boy to consciousness.

Thanks to the timely attention, Dick soon opened his eyes, stared
around him for an instant in bewilderment, and then exclaimed as he
made a vain attempt to rise,--

"I come pretty near knockin' under, didn't I? The last I remember was
of fallin'."

"I allow it was the closest shave you'll ever have agin," Parsons
replied grimly; "an' I'm free to say that them as are sich fools as to
cross this 'ere sand-barren afoot oughter stay on it, like as you were
in a fair way of doin' before we come along."

"An' that's what daddy would say, I s'pose. If he'd known what I was
goin' to do, there would have been a stop put to it, even though it
was to save his life I came."

"How can you save anybody's life by comin' out in sich