rumbling curse, began to strip saddle and bridle from his dead
pet mare, the tears running down his cheeks.

"And now what?" asked McHale.

"Now," Casey replied, "I guess we've got to make good."

CHAPTER XI

Some two miles distant from the construction camp at the dam, a little
cavalcade moved slowly through the darkness of a moonless, cloudy
night. A southeast wind was blowing, but it was a drying wind, with no
promise of rain. It had blown for days steadily, until it had sucked
every vestige of moisture from the top earth, leaving it merely powdery
dust. Because of it, too, no dew had fallen; the nights were as dry as
the days.

In the grain fields, the continued blast had stripped the surface soil
away from the young plants, wrenching and twisting them, desiccating
their roots, which, still too feeble to reach what dampness lay lower
down, sucked ineffectually at the dry breast of the earth. The plants
they could not feed took on the pale-green hue of starvation. There,
among the young grain, the stronger gusts lifted dust clouds acres in
extent. Low down along the surface, the soil sifted and shifted
continually, piling in windrows in spots, burying the young plants,
leaving others bare. Odd little devils of whirlwinds, marked by
columnar pillars of dust, danced deviously across the fields and along
the trails. From the standpoint of a disinterested person, the
ceaseless wind would have been unpleasant in its monotony; but from
the viewpoint of a rancher it was deadly in its persistence.

The moving figures were so strung out that it appeared almost as though
they were riding in the same direction fortuitously, without relation
to each other. First came two horsemen; then, at an interval of five
hundred yards, came a buckboard, with two men and a led horse. In the
rear, five hundred yards back, were two more riders.

This order, however, was not the result of accident, but of
calculation. The buckboard held Oscar and the elder McCrae. Also it
contained a quantity of dynamite. Naturally, it was drawn, not by
McCrae's eager road team, but by a pair of less ambition. And the
riders, front and rear, were in the nature of pickets; for, though it
was unlikely that any one would be met at that time of night, it was
just as well to take no chances.

The riders in the lead were Casey Dunne and Tom McHale. Each had a
rifle beneath his leg. In addition, McHale wore two old, ivory-handled
Colts at his belt,