Wayland’s glance ran along the trail; and for an instant, the writhing sun glare played the same trick with his own vision.  Something a dirty white quivered above the black lava table like the loose canvas top of a tented wagon.  The Ranger side-stepped the trail for a different angle of refraction.  The object blurred, then reappeared, a leaf from a note book not thirty yards away.  Wayland went quickly forward.  He was aware as he walked that the shrivelled earth heaved and sank so that he had the sensation of staggering.  It was a dirty leaf from a note book fouled by the Desert winds and lodged in the sage brush.  Then, he looked twice.  It was not lodged.  It was stuck down in the branches secure against the wind.  The ranger pulled the thing off.  The under side showed tobacco stains.  On the upper were scrawled in heavy pencil; By. 20 ml du est if yu don’t cath upp hit itt est flagg midnite frate carrie yu mine sitty.

“Railway twenty miles due East,” translated Wayland.  “That is probably true.  I think there is a branch line runs a hundred miles in to Mine City.  If you don’t catch up, hit it East, flag the midnight freight, she’ll carry you to Mine City.  Well?  What do you make of it?  Did they leave it; or did some body else?  If it had been there long, the wind would have torn it to tatters.”

“Let me see it.”  The old man turned it over in his hand.  “Evidently left to direct the man back in the Pass; they don’t believe he’s dead.”

The Ranger took it back and read it over.  “If they’re lagging back for the missing man, why didn’t they leave a message sooner?  Trail doesn’t fork here.  Why did they leave word here?”

“There really is a railway somewhere here, Wayland?”

“There must be if one knew where to find it.”

Matthews smiled.  “Then, A take it this is a gentle hint to go off and lose ourselves trying to find it.”

Wayland’s eyes rested on the slow-moving dust cloud against the horizon.

“Then it is a case of who lasts out!” He looked at his white haired companion.  “But there’s no call for you to risk your life on the last lap of the race.  It’s not your job.  It means another day; perhaps, two.  If you’d take my horse, it’s fresher, and the water bag, you could ride out to the railroad to-night.  Those fellows are not good for many miles more unless they hit a spring.  Let me go on alone, sir.”

“Alone?” The old man’s face flushed furious, livid. . . .  “Git epp!”

Up a sand bluff, heaving to the heat waves; down a slither of ash dust; then, across the petrified black lava roll; down to a saline sink, white and blistering to the sight; over a silt bank crumbly as flour; and on and yet on; across the dusty sage-smelling parched plain . . . they moved; always following the tracks; tracks confused and doubling back as if the hind horse lagged; with blood drip and shuffling dragging hoofs; always keeping the dust whirl of the fore horizon in view; on and on, but speaking scarcely at all!