19
XXIII Deveny Secedes 225
XXIV Kidnapped 229
XXV Ambushed 238
XXVI Rogers Takes a Hand 242
XXVII A Dual Tragedy 248
XXVIII Converging Trails 252
XXIX World's End 258
XXX The Ultimate Treachery 263
XXXI Peace--and a Sunset 274

"DRAG" HARLAN

CHAPTER I

A DESERT RIDER

From out of the shimmering haze that veiled the mystic eastern space came
a big black horse bearing a rider. Swinging wide, to avoid the feathery
dust that lay at the base of a huge sand dune, the black horse loped,
making no sound, and seeming to glide forward without effort. Like a
somber, gigantic ghost the animal moved, heroic of mold, embodying the
spirit of the country, seeming to bear the sinister message of the
desert, the whispered promise of death, the lingering threat, the grim
mockery of life, and the conviction of futility.

The black horse had come far. The glossy coat of him was thickly
sprinkled with alkali dust, sifted upon him by the wind of his passage
through the desert; his black muzzle was gray with it; ropes of it matted
his mane, his forelock had become a gray-tinged wisp which he fretfully
tossed; the dust had rimmed his eyes, causing them to loom large and
wild; and as his rider pulled him to a halt on the western side of the
sand dune--where both horse and rider would not be visible on the sky
line--he drew a deep breath, shook his head vigorously, and blew a thin
stream of dust from his nostrils.

With head and ears erect, his eyes flaming his undying courage and his
contempt for distance and the burning heat that the midday sun poured
upon him, he gazed westward, snorting long breaths into his eager lungs.

The rider sat motionless upon him--rigid and alert. His gaze also went
into the west; and he blinked against the white glare of sun and
distance, squinting his eyes and scanning the featureless waste with
appraising glances.

In the breathless, dead calm of the desert there was no sound or
movement. On all sides the vast gray waste stretched, a yawning inferno
of dead, dry sand overhung with a brassy, cloudless sky in which swam the
huge ball of molten silver that for ages had ruled that baked and
shriveled land.

A score of miles westward--twoscore, perhaps--the shadowy peaks of some
mountains loomed upward into the mystic haze, with purple bases melting