All through the remaining hours of the night the man, with the bridles of the two horses in one hand and the rifle in the other, kept watch.  Now and then he walked in a circle around and around the sleeping boy, and once or twice he smiled to himself.  He knew that Ned when he awoke would be indignant because Obed let him sleep, but the man felt quite able to stand such reproaches.

Obed, staunch as he was, felt the weirdness and appalling loneliness of time and place.  A wolf howled far out on the plain, and the answering howl of a wolf came back from another point.  He shivered a little, but he continued his steady tread around and around the circle.

Dawn shot up, gilding the bare brown plain with silver splendor for a little while.  Obed awoke Ned, and laughed at the boy’s protests.

“You feel stronger and fresher, Ned,” he said, “and nothing has been lost.”

“What of you?”

“I?  Oh, I’ll get my chance later.  All things come to him who works while he waits.  Meanwhile, I think we’d better take a drink out of our water bottles, eat a quick breakfast and be off before we have visitors.”

Once more in the saddle, they rode on over a plain unchanged in character, still the same swells and dips, still the same lonesome yuccas and mesquite, with the occasional clumps of bunch grass.

“Don’t you think we have shaken them off?” asked Ned.

“No,” replied Obed.  “They would scatter toward dawn and the one who picked up the trail would call the others with a whoop or a rifle shot.”

“Well, they’ve been called,” said Ned, who was looking back.  “See, there, on the highest ridge.”

A faint, dark blur had appeared on a crest three or four miles behind them, one that would have been wholly invisible had not the air been so clear and translucent.  It was impossible at the distance to distinguish shapes or detach anything from the general mass, but they knew very well that it was the Lipans.  Each felt a little chill at this pursuit so tenacious and so menacing.

“I wish that we had some sort of a place like that in which we faced the Mexicans, where we could put our backs to the wall and fight!” exclaimed Ned.

“I know how you feel,” said Obed, “because I feel the same way myself, but there isn’t any such place, Ned, and this plain doesn’t ever give any sign of producing one, so we’ll just ride on.  We’ll trust to time and chance.  Something may happen in our favor.”

They strengthened their hearts, whistled to their horses and rode ahead.  As on the day before the interminable pursuit went on hour after hour.  It was another hot day, and their water bottles were almost emptied.  The horses had had nothing to drink since the day before and the two fugitives began to feel for them, but about noon they came to a little pool, lying in a dip or hollow between the swells.  It was perhaps fifty feet either way, less than a foot deep and the water was yellowish in color, but it contained no alkali nor any other bitter infusion.  Moreover, grass grew around its edges and some wild ducks swam on its surface.  It would have been a good place for a camp and they would have stayed there gladly had it not been for that threat which always hung on the southern horizon.