to an elephant, with the same suggestion of power and endurance.  Slone discarded the pack-saddle and bags.  The latter were almost empty.  He roped the tarpaulin on the back of the mustang, and, making a small bundle of his few supplies, he tied that to the tarpaulin.  His blanket he used for a saddle-blanket on Nagger.  Of the utensils left by the Stewarts he chose a couple of small iron pans, with long handles.  The rest he left.  In his saddle-bags he had a few extra horseshoes, some nails, bullets for his rifle, and a knife with a heavy blade.

“Not a rich outfit for a far country,” he mused.  Slone did not talk very much, and when he did he addressed Nagger and himself simultaneously.  Evidently he expected a long chase, one from which he would not return, and light as his outfit was it would grow too heavy.

Then he mounted and rode down the gradual slope, facing the valley and the black, bold, flat mountain to the southeast.  Some few hundred yards from camp he halted Nagger and bent over in the saddle to scrutinize the ground.

The clean-cut track of a horse showed in the bare, hard sand.  The hoof-marks were large, almost oval, perfect in shape, and manifestly they were beautiful to Lin Slone.  He gazed at them for a long time, and then he looked across the dotted red valley up the vast ridgy steps, toward the black plateau and beyond.  It was the look that an Indian gives to a strange country.  Then Slone slipped off the saddle and knelt to scrutinize the horse tracks.  A little sand had blown into the depressions, and some of it was wet and some of it was dry.  He took his time about examining it, and he even tried gently blowing other sand into the tracks, to compare that with what was already there.  Finally he stood up and addressed Nagger.

“Reckon we won’t have to argue with Abe an’ Bill this mornin’,” he said, with satisfaction.  “Wildfire made that track yesterday, before sun-up.”

Thereupon Slone remounted and put Nagger to a trot.  The pack-horse followed with an alacrity that showed he had no desire for loneliness.

As straight as a bee-line Wildfire had left a trail down into the floor of the valley.  He had not stopped to graze, and he had not looked for water.  Slone had hoped to find a water-hole in one of the deep washes in the red earth, but if there had been any water there Wildfire would have scented it.  He had not had a drink for three days that Slone knew of.  And Nagger had not drunk for forty hours.  Slone had a canvas water-bag hanging over the pommel, but it was a habit of his to deny himself, as far as possible, till his horse could drink also.  Like an Indian, Slone ate and drank but little.

It took four hours of steady trotting to reach the middle and bottom of that wide, flat valley.  A network of washes cut up the whole center of it, and they were all as dry as bleached bone.  To cross these Slone had only to keep Wildfire’s trail.  And it was proof of Nagger’s quality that he did not have to veer from the stallion’s course.