“Surely,” replied Madeline; and she smiled at his inference.  She knew what a storm was in that country, and her guests had yet to experience one.  “If it rains, let it rain.”

Stewart rode on, and Madeline followed.  Up the slope toiled and nodded the pack-animals, the little burros going easily where the horses labored.  Their packs, like the humps of camels, bobbed from side to side.  Stones rattled down; the heat-waves wavered black; the dust puffed up and sailed.  The sky was a pale blue, like heated steel, except where dark clouds peeped over the mountain crests.  A heavy, sultry atmosphere made breathing difficult.  Down the slope the trailing party stretched out in twos and threes, and it was easy to distinguish the weary riders.

Half a mile farther up Madeline could see over the foothills to the north and west and a little south, and she forgot the heat and weariness and discomfort for her guests in wide, unlimited prospects of sun-scorched earth.  She marked the gray valley and the black mountains and the wide, red gateway of the desert, and the dim, shadowy peaks, blue as the sky they pierced.  She was sorry when the bleak, gnarled cedar-trees shut off her view.

Then there came a respite from the steep climb, and the way led in a winding course through a matted, storm-wrenched forest of stunted trees.  Even up to this elevation the desert reached with its gaunt hand.  The clouds overspreading the sky, hiding the sun, made a welcome change.  The pack-train rested, and Stewart and Madeline waited for the party to come up.  Here he briefly explained to her that Don Carlos and his bandits had left the ranch some time in the night.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a faint wind rustled the scant foliage of the cedars.  The air grew oppressive; the horses panted.

“Sure it’ll be a hummer,” said Stewart.  “The first storm almost always is bad.  I can feel it in the air.”

The air, indeed, seemed to be charged with a heavy force that was waiting to be liberated.

One by one the couples mounted to the cedar forest, and the feminine contingent declaimed eloquently for rest.  But there was to be no permanent rest until night and then that depended upon reaching the crags.  The pack-train wagged onward, and Stewart fell in behind.  The storm-center gathered slowly around the peaks; low rumble and howl of thunder increased in frequence; slowly the light shaded as smoky clouds rolled up; the air grew sultrier, and the exasperating breeze puffed a few times and then failed.

An hour later the party had climbed high and was rounding the side of a great bare ridge that long had hidden the crags.  The last burro of the pack-train plodded over the ridge out of Madeline’s sight.  She looked backward down the slope, amused to see her guests change wearily from side to side in their saddles.  Far below lay the cedar flat and the foothills.  Far to the west the sky was still clear, with shafts of sunlight shooting down from behind the encroaching clouds.