“All right, Wolf—­coming.”  Never had Hare saddled so speedily, nor mounted so quickly.  He sent Silvermane into the willow-skirted trail close behind the dog, up on the rocky bench, and then under the bulging wall.  Wolf reached the level between the canyon and Echo Cliffs, and then started straight west toward the Painted Desert.  He trotted a few rods and turned to see if the man was coming.

Doubt, fear, uncertainty ceased for Hare.  With the first blast of dust-scented air in his face he knew Wolf was leading him to Mescal.  He knew that the cry he had heard in his dream was hers, that the old mysterious promise of the desert had at last begun its fulfilment.  He gave one sharp exultant answer to that call.  The horizon, ever-widening, lay before him, and the treeless plains, the sun-scorched slopes, the sandy stretches, the massed blocks of black mesas, all seemed to welcome him; his soul sang within him.

For Mescal was there.  Far away she must be, a mere grain of sand in all that world of drifting sands, perhaps ill, perhaps hurt, but alive, waiting for him, calling for him, crying out with a voice that no distance could silence.  He did not see the sharp peaks as pitiless barriers, nor the mesas and domes as black-faced death, nor the moisture-drinking sands as life-sucking foes to plant and beast and man.  That painted wonderland had sheltered Mescal for a year.  He had loved it for its color, its change, its secrecy; he loved it now because it had not been a grave for Mescal, but a home.  Therefore he laughed at the deceiving yellow distances in the foreground of glistening mesas, at the deceiving purple distances of the far-off horizon.  The wind blew a song in his ears; the dry desert odors were fragrance in his nostrils; the sand tasted sweet between his teeth, and the quivering heat-waves, veiling the desert in transparent haze, framed beautiful pictures for his eyes.

Wolf kept to the fore for some thirty paces, and though he had ceased to stop, he still looked back to see if the horse and man were following.  Hare had noted the dog occasionally in the first hours of travel, but he had given his eyes mostly to the broken line of sky and desert in the west, to the receding contour of Echo Cliffs, to the spread and break of the desert near at hand.  Here and there life showed itself in a gaunt coyote sneaking into the cactus, or a horned toad huddling down in the dust, or a jewel-eyed lizard sunning himself upon a stone.  It was only when his excited fancy had cooled that Hare came to look closely at Wolf.  But for the dog’s color he could not have been distinguished from a real wolf.  His head and ears and tail drooped, and he was lame in his right front paw.

Hare halted in the shade of a stone, dismounted and called the dog to him.  Wolf returned without quickness, without eagerness, without any of the old-time friendliness of shepherding days.  His eyes were sad and strange.  Hare felt a sudden foreboding, but rejected it with passionate force.  Yet a chill remained.  Lifting Wolf’s paw he discovered that the ball of the foot was worn through; whereupon he called into service a piece of buckskin, and fashioning a rude moccasin he tied it round the foot.  Wolf licked his hand, but there was no change in the sad light of his eyes.  He turned toward the west as if anxious to be off.