“Talk about the heroes o’ cold in the North,” he said. “’Tis easy!  Y’r cold buoys a man up!  This stews the life out before ye have a fightin’ chance!  Y’ could light a match on these saddle buckles.”

“I think I see sand hills ahead.  If there’s any shade, we’ll rest till twilight.”

The lava rocks rolled to a trough of sand; and the light lay a shimmering lake in the alkali sink.

“Is that what y’ call a false pond?”

“No, I hope you’ll not see any false ponds this trip!  False pond is in your head or your eye; and the harder you ride, the faster it runs.  Let’s get out of this wind!”

Wayland noticed the horses paw restlessly and nose at the gravel when they crossed the dry bed of a spring stream.

“Think y’ could dig down to water with y’r axe, Wayland?”

The Ranger pointed to the wide cracks in the baked earth, dry as flour dust deep as they could see.  The mule led the way at a run up the next sand roll.

“Think he smells water, Wayland?”

Another broad mesa rolled away to the silver strip of mountain on the sky line; but the fore ground broke into slabs and blocks of red stone.  Wayland examined the trail.  It twisted in and out among the rocks towards more broken country.

“There may be a canyon leading South over there,” he pointed.

“Y’ might try for a spring beneath that big rock.  Looks green at the bottom.”

A mist as of primrose or fire tinged the lakes of quivering light lying on the ochre-colored mesas.  The sun hung close to the silver strip of mountain exaggerated to a huge dull blood-red shield.

“Wayland, is this desert light red or is it that A’m seein’ red?”

The Ranger looked a third time at his companion.  The old man sat more erect; but his eyes were blood shot.  A puff of wind, a lift and fall and drift of sand, the wind met them in a peppering shower of hot shot.

“Is that a rain cloud comin’ up?”

Wayland glanced back.  The heavy dust rose a red-black curtain above the flame-crested ridges of orange sand.

“You’re a churchman, sir!  You should know!  Ever read in Scripture of the cloud by day and the pillar by night?  Ever think what that might mean on the scorching Red Sea job when Moses led a personally conducted tour through the desert?”

“Dust?” queried the preacher.

“By Harry,” cried Wayland, “that mule does smell water.”

The little beast had set off for the red rock at a canter.  Wayland’s horse followed at a long gallop.  The broncho of the old clergyman with the heavier man lurched to a tired lope.  They felt the eddies of dust as they tore ahead, saw the rainless clouds gathering low and gray far behind, saw the sun lurid through the whirls of red silt, saw the dust toss up among the lava beds like snow in a blizzard, then the sand storm broke, the dry storm of rainless clouds and choking dust flaying the air in rainless lightning.  They gave the ponies blind rein and shot round the sheltered side of the great red rock into one of those hidden river beds that trench below the surface of the desert in cutways and canyons.  It was dry.