“I reckon I won’t see Sevier Village soon again—­an’ maybe never,” he soliloquized.

There was no one to regret him, unless it was old Mother Hall, who had been kind to him on those rare occasions when he got out of the wilderness.  Still, it was with regret that he gazed away across the red valley to the west.  Slone had no home.  His father and mother had been lost in the massacre of a wagon-train by Indians, and he had been one of the few saved and brought to Salt Lake.  That had happened when he was ten years old.  His life thereafter had been hard, and but for his sturdy Texas training he might not have survived.  The last five years he had been a horse-hunter in the wild uplands of Nevada and Utah.

Slone turned his attention to the pack of supplies.  The Stewarts had divided the flour and the parched corn equally, and unless he was greatly mistaken they had left him most of the coffee and all of the salt.

“Now I hold that decent of Bill an’ Abe,” said Slone, regretfully.  “But I could have got along without it better ’n they could.”

Then he swiftly set about kindling a fire and getting a meal.  In the midst of his task a sudden ruddy brightness fell around him.  Lin Slone paused in his work to look up.

The sun had risen over the eastern wall.

“Ah!” he said, and drew a deep breath.

The cold, steely, darkling sweep of desert had been transformed.  It was now a world of red earth and gold rocks and purple sage, with everywhere the endless straggling green cedars.  A breeze whipped in, making the fire roar softly.  The sun felt warm on his cheek.  And at the moment he heard the whistle of his horse.

“Good old Nagger!” he said.  “I shore won’t have to track you this mornin’.”

Presently he went off into the cedars to find Nagger and the mustang that he used to carry a pack.  Nagger was grazing in a little open patch among the trees, but the pack-horse was missing.  Slone seemed to know in what direction to go to find the trail, for he came upon it very soon.  The pack-horse wore hobbles, but he belonged to the class that could cover a great deal of ground when hobbled.  Slone did not expect the horse to go far, considering that the grass thereabouts was good.  But in a wild-horse country it was not safe to give any horse a chance.  The call of his wild brethren was irresistible.  Slone, however, found the mustang standing quietly in a clump of cedars, and, removing the hobbles, he mounted and rode back to camp.  Nagger caught sight of him and came at his call.

This horse Nagger appeared as unique in his class as Slone was rare among riders.  Nagger seemed of several colors, though black predominated.  His coat was shaggy, almost woolly, like that of a sheep.  He was huge, raw-boned, knotty, long of body and long of leg, with the head of a war charger.  His build did not suggest speed.  There appeared to be something slow and ponderous about him, similar