Several miles out from the ranch ran the naked posts of the line fence.  Pat reined in the ponies and gazed up and down the line.  A mile beyond, the ranch road merged with the main-traveled highway running east and west.  He spoke to the horses.  They broke into a fast trot.  Waco, gripping the seat, stared straight ahead.  Why had Pat laid that gun on the seat?

A thin, gray veil drifted across the sun.  From the northwest a light wind sprang up and ran across the mesa, whipping the bunch-grass.  The wind grew heavier, and with it came a fine, dun-colored dust.  An hour and the air was thick with a shifting red haze of sand.  The sun glowed dimly through the murk.

Waco turned up his coat-collar and shivered.  The air was keen.  The ponies fought the bit, occasionally breaking into a gallop.  Pat braced his feet and held them to a trot.  A weird buzzing came down the wind.  The ponies reared and took to the ditch as a machine flicked past and drummed away in the distance.

To Waco, rigid and staring, the air seemed filled with a kind of hovering terror, a whining threat of danger that came in bursts of driving sand and dwindled away to harsh whisperings.  He stood it as long as he could.  Pat had not spoken.

[Illustration:  A huddled shape near a boulder]

Waco touched his arm.  “I got a hunch,” he said hoarsely,—­“I got a hunch we oughta go back.”

Pat nodded.  But the ponies swept on down the road, their manes and tails whipping in the wind.  Another mile and they slowed down in heavy sand.  The buckboard tilted forward as they descended the sharp pitch of an arroyo.  Unnoticed, Pat’s gun slipped to the floor of the wagon.

In the arroyo the wind seemed to have died away, leaving a startled quietness.  It still hung above them, and an occasional gust filled their eyes with grit.  Waco drew a deep breath.  The ponies tugged through the heavy sand.

Without a sound to warn them a rider appeared close to the front wheel of the buckboard.  Waco shrank down in sodden terror.  It was the Starr foreman, High-Chin Bob.  Waco saw Pat’s hand flash to his side, then fumble on the seat.

“I’m payin’ the Kid’s debt,” said High Chin, and, laughing, he threw shot after shot into the defenseless body of his old enemy.

Waco saw Pat slump forward, catch himself, and finally topple from the seat.  As the reins slipped from his fingers the ponies lunged up the arroyo.  Waco crouched, clutching the foot-rail.  A bullet hummed over his head.  Gaining the level, the ponies broke into a wild run.  The red wind whined as it drove across the mesa.  The buckboard lurched sickeningly.  A scream of terror wailed down the wind as the buckboard struck a telegraph pole.  A blind shock—­and for Waco the droning of the wind had ceased.

Dragging the broken traces, the ponies circled the mesa and set off at a gallop toward home.  At the side of the road lay the splintered buckboard, wheels up.  And Waco, hovering on the edge of the black abyss, dreamed strange dreams.