y had come from a point directly westward; but he could
not be sure, for he had seen no smoke.

He talked no more to the horse, sitting rigidly in the saddle, erect, his
head bent a little forward, his chin thrusting, his lips curving with a
bitterly savage snarl. He felt the presence of living things with him in
the desert; a presentiment had gripped him--a conviction that living men
were close and hostile.

Reaching downward, he drew the rifle from the saddle holster and examined
its mechanism. Placing it across his knee, he drew out his heavy pistols,
one after another, slowly twirling the cylinders. He replaced the
pistols, making sure that the holster flaps were out of the way so that
they would not catch or drag at the weapons when he wanted to use
them--and with the rifle resting across his legs near the saddle horn, he
rode slowly forward.

He swung wide of even the small sand dunes as he passed them, and he kept
a vigilant eye upon the dead rocks that dotted the level at infrequent
intervals. Even the cactus clumps received flattering attention; and the
little stretches of greasewood that came within range of his vision were
examined closely.

At the end of half an hour he had seen nothing unusual. Here and there he
had noticed a rattler lurking in the shade of a rock or partly concealed
under the thorny blade of a sprawling cactus; and he had seen a sage hen
nestling in the hot sand. But these were fixtures--as was also the
Mexican eagle that winged its slow way in mile-wide circles in the
glaring, heat-pulsing sky.

The rider again halted the black horse. The presentiment of evil had
grown upon him, and he twisted around in the saddle, sweeping the
desolate vast level with cold, alert, puzzled eyes.

There was no object near him behind which an enemy might lie concealed;
the gray floor of the desert within many hundred miles of him was smooth
and flat and obstructionless. Far away, half a mile, perhaps, he saw a
thrusting knob of rock, with some cactus fringing it. From where he sat
in the saddle it seemed that the rock might be the peak of a mountain
reaching upward out of the sea of sand and desert waste--but it was
barren on sides and top, and would afford no concealment for an enemy,
except at its base. And even the base was not large enough to conceal
more than a few men.

The rider gazed long at the rock, but could detect no sign of movement
near it. He had turned from it, to look again into the