With two of the rabbits across his lap, the tiny hunter made no effort to rise.  It was certainly secure to be sitting here in the sand, for at least a fellow could fall no farther, and the good, big mountain was not so impetuous or nervous as the pony.

An hour went by and the mere little mite of a man had scarcely moved.  The sun was slanting towards the southwest corner of the universe.  A flock of geese, in a great changing V, flew slowly over the valley, their wings beating gold from the sunlight, their honk! honk! honk! the note of the end of the year.

How soon they were gone!  Then indeed all the earth was abandoned to the quiet little youngster and his still more quiet company of rabbits.  There was no particular reason for moving.  Where should he go, and how could he go, did he wish to leave?  To carry his bunny would be quite beyond his strength; to leave him here would be equally beyond his courage.

But the sun was edging swiftly towards its hiding place; the frost of the mountain air was quietly sharpening its teeth.  Already the long, gray shadow of the sage-brush fell like a cooling film across the little fellow’s form and face.

Homeless, unmissed, and deserted, the tiny man could do nothing but sit there and wait.  The day would go, the twilight come, and the night descend—­the night with its darkness, its whispered mysteries, its wailing coyotes, cruising in solitary melancholy hither and thither in their search for food.

But the sun was still wheeling, like a brazen disk, on the rim of the hills, when something occurred.  A tall, lanky man, something over forty years of age, as thin as a hammer and dusty as the road itself—­a man with a beard and a long, gray, drooping mustache, and with drooping clothes—­a man selected by shiftlessness to be its sign and mark—­a miner in boots and overalls and great slouch hat—­came tramping down a trail of the mountain.  He was holding in his dusty arms a yellowish pup, that squirmed and wriggled and tried to lap his face, and comported himself in pup-wise antics, till his master was presently obliged to put him down in self-defence.

The pup knew his duty, as to racing about, bumping into bushes, snorting in places where game might abide, and thumping everything he touched with his super-active tail.  Almost immediately he scented mysteries in plenty, for Indian ponies and hunters had left a fine, large assortment of trails in the sand, that no wise pup could consent to ignore.

With yelps of gladness and appreciation, the pup went awkwardly knocking through the brush, and presently halted—­bracing abruptly with his clumsy paws—­amazed and confounded by the sight of a frightened little red-man, sitting with his rabbits in the sand.

For a second the dog was voiceless.  Then he let out a bark that made things jump, especially the tiny man and himself.

“Here, come here, Tintoretto,” drawlingly called the man from the trail.  “Come back here, you young tenderfoot.”