of mountain and milky blot, then back again, pools of crystal water, cool mountain lakes, this time with the trees up side down and figures among the trees.  He knew by the trees being up side down, though he was dreaming of laughing as he drank and drank, that it must be a mirage!  Then he came to himself wondering how in the world he was sitting on the sand bank.  And why hadn’t he kept the tea leaves to put on his eyes in case of heat inflammation?  Then, it tripped almost under his feet, you understand he did not trip, he had struck at it with his Service axe—­the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws’ trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt sands.  He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth:  a blot against the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes.  Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; or had he fallen asleep to dream her face framed in the blur of the purpling haze, receding from him, drawing him with the shine of the stars in her eyes, drawing him with the warmth of their first passion kiss on her lips?  He would rise from his grave, and follow her from death, if she wove such spells, whether of dreams or delirium or mirage!  The Ranger found himself stumbling across the baked silt and lava rocks, stripped of his hat and his boots, stripped like a marathon runner, vaguely conscious that he ought to have kept those tea leaves for that burn in his eyes, that the silver strip of the mountain was there just ahead; now a crystal pool of the cool mountain lake in mid air; now her face had vanished into the blue haze.  Suddenly, winged things flappered up with raucous protest.  The coyote had skulked over the edge of the lava dip; not the burnt-oil earth-scorched Desert smell, but the shrivelled putridity of flesh smote and nauseated his senses.  The white pack horse of the outlaw drovers lay dead across the trail at his feet, a pool of clotted blood darkening the ashy sand.  Its throat had been cut. . . .

The Ranger drew off, rubbed his eyes and looked again.  The crumbly silt had been trampled all round the dead horse.  So they, too, were dying of thirst on the Desert.  Which way to follow now?  There were the hoof prints across the open level; but forking from the main trail was another track:  that of a man dragged or dragging or crawling forward on his hands and knees.  Had they deserted the third man; or had the third man dropped back from them to cut his horse’s throat?  The Ranger laughed aloud, a harsh cracked laugh; he knew he was delirious.  The Lord had played an ace and he wouldn’t trump His trick by going after the trail of the man who had crawled away to die.  There was a Deity of retribution at least, whether God or demon:  he had vowed he would make those blackguards drink horse blood!