After breakfast most of the rustlers set themselves to their various tasks.  Hare watched them with the eyes of a lynx watching deer.  Several men were arranging articles for packing, and their actions were slow to the point of laziness; others trooped down toward the corral.  Holderness rolled a cigarette and stooped over the campfire to reach a burning stick.  Snap Naab stalked to and fro before the door of the cabin.  He alone of the rustler’s band showed restlessness, and more than once he glanced up the trail that led over the divide toward his father’s oasis.  Holderness sent expectant glances in the other direction toward Seeping Springs.  Once his clear voice rang out: 

“I tell you, Naab, there’s no hurry.  We’ll ride in tomorrow.”

A thousand thoughts flitted through Hare’s mind—­a steady stream of questions and answers.  Why did Snap look anxiously along the oasis trail?  It was not that he feared his father or his brothers alone, but there was always the menace of the Navajos.  Why was Holderness in no hurry to leave Silver Cup?  Why did he lag at the spring when, if he expected riders from his ranch, he could have gone on to meet them, obviously saving time and putting greater distance between him and the men he had wronged?  Was it utter fearlessness or only a deep-played game?  Holderness and his rustlers, all except the gloomy Naab, were blind to the peril that lay beyond the divide.  How soon would August Naab strike out on the White Sage trail?  Would he come alone?  Whether he came alone or at the head of his hard-riding Navajos he would arrive too late.  Holderness’s life was not worth a pinch of the ashes he flecked so carelessly from his cigarette.  Snap Naab’s gloom, his long stride, his nervous hand always on or near the butt of his Colt, spoke the keenness of his desert instinct.  For him the sun had arisen red over the red wall.  Had he harmed Mescal?  Why did he keep the cabin door shut and guard it so closely?

While Hare watched and thought the hours sped by.  Holderness lounged about and Snap kept silent guard.  The rustlers smoked, slept, and moved about; the day waned, and the shadow of the cliff crept over the cabin.  To Hare the time had been as a moment; he was amazed to find the sun had gone down behind Coconina.  If August Naab had left the oasis at dawn he must now be near the divide, unless he had been delayed by a wind-storm at the strip of sand.  Hare longed to see the roan charger come up over the crest; he longed to see a file of Navajos, plumes waving, dark mustangs gleaming in the red light, sweep down the stony ridge toward the cedars.  “If they come,” he whispered, “I’ll kill Holderness and Snap and any man who tries to open that cabin door.”