“Can the salt-boy stay on with the sheep while you come with us?” asked John DeWitt.  “I’ll pay your boss for the whole flock if anything goes wrong.”  He wanted the keen wit of the herder on the hunt.

The Mexican nodded eagerly.

“I’ll stay!”

Shortly the four were riding northward across the desert.  They were in fairly good shape for a hard tide.  Two days before, they had stopped at Squaw Spring ranch and re-outfitted.  With proper care of the horses they were good for three weeks away from supplies.  And for two weeks now they scoured the desert, meeting scarcely a human, finding none of the traces that Rhoda was so painfully dropping along her course.  The hugeness, the cruelty of the region drove the hopelessness of their mission more and more deeply into DeWitt’s brain.  It seemed impossible except by the merest chance to find trace of another human in a waste so vast.  It seemed to him that it was not skill but the gambler’s instinct for luck that guided Carlos and Billy.

They rode through open desert country one afternoon, the only mountains discernible being a far purple haze along the horizon.  For hours the little cavalcade had moved without speech.  Then to the north, Porter discerned a dot moving toward them.  Gradually under their eager eyes the dot grew into a man who staggered as he walked.  When he observed the horsemen coming toward him he sat down and waited.

“Jim Provenso!  By the limping Piper!” cried Billy.  “Thought you was in Silver City.”

Jim was beyond useless speech.  He caught the canteen which Jack swung to him and drank deeply.  Then he said hoarsely: 

“I almost got away with the Tuttle girl last week!”

Every man left his saddle as if at a word of command.  Jim took another drink.

“If I catch that Injun alone I’ll cut his throat!”

“Was Miss Tuttle bad off?” gasped Porter.

“She?  Naw; she looked fine.  He sassed me, though, as I won’t take it from any man!”

“Tell us what happened, for heaven’s sake,” cried DeWitt, eying Provenso disgustedly.

Jim told his story in detail.

“That Injun Alkus,” he ended, “he tied a rag over my eyes, tied my hands up and, say, he lost me for fair!  He took all day to it.  At night he tied me up to a tree and I stood there all night before I got my hands loose.  I was sure lost, now, I can tell you!  I struck a cowman up on the range the next night.  He give me some grub and a canteen and I made out pretty good till yesterday, working south all the time.  Then I got crazy with thirst and threw my canteen away.  Found a spring last night again, but I’m about all in.”

“How did Miss Tuttle seem?” asked John with curious quietness.  It seemed to him the strangest thing of all that first the Mexican, then this coarse, tramp-like fellow, should have talked to Rhoda while he could only wander wildly through the Hades of the desert without a trace of her camp to solace him.