Then, with an abruptness that cannot be pictured, everything was blotted out in a great, blinding swirl of dust as the wind came whooping down upon them.  It threw Casey as though some one had tripped him.  It spun him round and round on his back like an overturned beetle, and then scooted him across the lake’s surface flat as a floor.  He thought of the Crevice, but there was nothing he could do save hold his head off the ground and his two palms over his face, shielding his nostrils a little from the smother of dust.

Sometimes he was lifted inches from the surface and borne with incredible swiftness.  More than once he was spun round and round until his senses reeled.  But all the time he was going somewhere, and I suspect that for once in his life Casey Ryan went fast enough to satisfy him.  At last he felt brush sweep past his body, and he knew that he must have been swept to the edge of the lake.  He clutched, scratched his hands bloody on the straggly thorns of greasewood, caught in the dark at a more friendly sage and gripped it next the roots.  The wind tore at him, howling.  Casey flattened his abused body to the hummocky sand and hung on.

Hours later, by the pale stars that peered out breathlessly when the fury of the gale was gone, Casey pulled himself painfully to his feet and looked for the burros and William.  Judging by his own experience, they had had a rough time of it and would not go far after the wind permitted them to stop.  But as to guessing how far they had been impelled, or in what direction, Casey knew that was impossible.  Still, he tried.  When the air grew clearer and the surrounding hills bulked like huge shadows against the sky, he saw that he had been blown toward the ridge that guards Crazy Woman lake.  His pack animals should be somewhere ahead of him, he thought groggily, and began stumbling along through the brush-covered sand dunes that bordered Furnace Lake for miles.

And then he saw again the light, shining up there just under the crest of the ridge.  He was glad the car had escaped, but he reflected that the tricky winds of the desert seldom sweep a large area.  Their diabolic fury implies a concentration of force that must of necessity weaken as it flows out away from the center.  Up there on the ridge they may not have experienced more than a steady blow.

He walked slowly because of his bruises, and many times he made small detours, thinking that a blotch of shadow off to one side might be his pack train.  But always a greasewood mocked him, waving stiff arms at him derisively.  In the sage-land distances deceive.  A man may walk unseen before your eyes, and a bush afar off may trick you with its semblance to man or beast.  Casey finally gave up the hopeless search and headed straight for the light.

It was standing still,—­a car facing him with its headlights burning, the distance so great that the two lights glowed as one.  “An’ it ain’t no Ford,” Casey decided.  “They wouldn’t keep the engine runnin’ all this time, standin’ still.  Unless it’s one of them old kind with lamps.”