“The shadow of a great rock in a weary land,” quoted the old man sliding from his horse exhausted.

Foot prints of men and horses punctured the moist silt of the river bottom.  The little mule was kicking and squealing where the red rock came through the clay bank.  Down the terra cotta ledge trickled a tiny rill not so large as a pencil.  Wayland was chopping a deep mud hole in the river-bottom up which slowly oozed a yellow pool.

“Don’t drink that, sir,” he ordered.

The old frontiersman was stooping to lave up a handful of the muddy fluid.

“Don’t drink that if you want to get out alive!  Wait, I have something in the pack!”

He threw the cinch ropes free from the mule, pulled out the sacks of flour and bacon and coffee.  “Here we are.”  He drew out the only can of beans and punctured the end with his knife.

“If you will satisfy your thirst with that juice, I’ll catch the trickle down the rock while we rest; but you must never drink this alkali sink stuff.”

Leaving the horses nuzzling the muddy pool, the Ranger stuck his jack knife into a crevice of the ledge and hung the small kettle where it would catch the drip.  Matthews was examining the tracks.

“Not more than an hour or two old, an’ A’m thinking, Wayland, we’ve fooled them out of water!”

“They’ll keep to the shelter of the cutway long as this dust storm lasts.”

Wayland was following down the tracks.

The sun had sunk behind the silver strip of mountain reddening the heat lakes and the Desert air.  Across the mesas, the silt dust and sand drift still whirled in fitful gusts; but the air no longer carried the scorch of burning oil.  The sky that had blazed all day in fiery brass darkened and closed near to earth, a throbbing thing of the Desert night brooding over life:  a oneness of space rimmed round by the red sky line.

“Hullo,” exclaimed Wayland, pointing to the bank.  “We are not so far behind:  there is the freshly opened cache.”

Where the cutway caved to a hollow lay a hole littered with empty cans and canvas bags.

“Not much value left, eh?  Hold on, Wayland, this might be useful.”  Matthews had picked up a skin water bag.  It was full of tepid water.

“They’re harder pressed than I thought.  They’ve had water stored here.  They’ll rest somewhere in the cutway to-night.  We’ll likely run them down before morning if our horses can stand it.”

Back at the rock, the Ranger was cooking their supper over a fire of withered moss and pinon chips, keeping the old man’s mind off his fevered thirst by calling attention to the tricks of Desert growth to save water.

“You see the cactus turns its leaves into water vats with spikes to keep intruders off; and the greasewood stops evaporation by a varnish of gum.  I’m sun-veneered all right.  I don’t sweat all my moisture out—­”