The old man drank from the neck of the water bag and wiped his mouth with his hand.

“Queer effect y’r heat has on a North man, Wayland!  D’ y’ know what A’d be doing if A let myself?”

“Drinking those blue shadows again?”

“No, sir, A’d be babbling and babbling about the sea!  A fall asleep as we ride; an’ when A wake from a doze, ’tisn’t the sea of sand, ’tis the sea o’ water that’s about me!  The yellow sea o’ York Fort up Hudson Bay way where A took the boats from Saskatchewan.”

Wayland helped him to mount.

“Aren’t y’ goin’ to ride y’rself?”

“No,” answered Wayland.  “I’m going to keep one horse fresh.  Best this one to-day:  then we’ll change off and rest yours to-morrow.  Those fellows can’t go any faster than we do.  This heat will beat them out if we can’t.  I’ll make those blackguards glad to drink horse-blood.”

Then, they moved forward again, Wayland leading on foot, the little pack mule to the rear, both horses stumbling clumsily, raising clouds of dust; breathing hard, with heaving flanks.

That night, they halted in broken country . . . more red buttes; hummocks of red; silt crust trenched by the crumbly cutways of spring freshets; sand hills billowing to a brick red sky, where the sun hung a dull blaze.  There were tracks of the fleeing drovers having paused for a rest in the same place.  It was a pebble bottom hot and dry.  Wayland scooped under with his Service axe and an ooze of clay water seeped slowly up forming a brackish pool.  He had to hold the little mule back from fighting the horses for that water.  When the animals had drunk, he filled the water bag with the settlings.  Towards three in the morning, the soft velvet pansy blue Desert dark broke to a sulphur mist.  Wayland saddled horses and mule and wakened the old frontiersman.

“Eh, where’s this?” He came to himself heavily.  “Wayland, is this hell-broth of a sulphur stew doin’ me?  Has y’r Desert got me, Wayland?”

“No, sir, when the Desert gets you, it gets you raving mad with fever.  Chains won’t hold you!  This soggy sleep is all right.  Long as you sleep, you’ll keep your head!”

All the same, the Ranger noticed that the old man ate scarcely any breakfast.  For those people who think that the Ranger’s life consists of an easy all day jog-trot, it would be well to set down exactly of what that breakfast consisted.  It consisted of slap jacks made with water sediment.  Both men were afraid to draw on the water from the skin bag for tea.

They passed dead pools that day, places where Desert travellers had stuck up posts to mark a spring; but where the Service axe failed to find water below the saline crust.  Then, Wayland knew why the sulphur dust drift moved so slowly against the horizon.  The outlaws had not found water.  Horses and men were fagging.  A velveteen coat had been thrown aside to lighten weight; from the dust markings