ACROSS CACTUS AND LAVA

Blanco Sol showed no inclination to bend his head to the alfalfa which swished softly about his legs.  Gale felt the horse’s sensitive, almost human alertness.  Sol knew as well as his master the nature of that flight.

At the far corner of the field Yaqui halted, and slowly the line of white horses merged into a compact mass.  There was a trail here leading down to the river.  The campfires were so close that the bright blazes could be seen in movement, and dark forms crossed in front of them.  Yaqui slipped out of his saddle.  He ran his hand over Diablo’s nose and spoke low, and repeated this action for each of the other horses.  Gale had long ceased to question the strange Indian’s behavior.  There was no explaining or understanding many of his manoeuvers.  But the results of them were always thought-provoking.  Gale had never seen horse stand so silently as in this instance; no stamp—­no champ of bit—­no toss of head—­no shake of saddle or pack—­no heave or snort!  It seemed they had become imbued with the spirit of the Indian.

Yaqui moved away into the shadows as noiselessly as if he were one of them.  The darkness swallowed him.  He had taken a parallel with the trail.  Gale wondered if Yaqui meant to try to lead his string of horses by the rebel sentinels.  Ladd had his head bent low, his ear toward the trail.  Jim’s long neck had the arch of a listening deer.  Gale listened, too, and as the slow, silent moments went by his faculty of hearing grew more acute from strain.  He heard Blanco Sol breathe; he heard the pound of his own heart; he heard the silken rustle of the alfalfa; he heard a faint, far-off sound of voice, like a lost echo.  Then his ear seemed to register a movement of air, a disturbance so soft as to be nameless.  Then followed long, silent moments.

Yaqui appeared as he had vanished.  He might have been part of the shadows.  But he was there.  He started off down the trail leading Diablo.  Again the white line stretched slowly out.  Gale fell in behind.  A bench of ground, covered with sparse greasewood, sloped gently down to the deep, wide arroyo of Forlorn River.  Blanco Sol shied a few feet out of the trail.  Peering low with keen eyes, Gale made out three objects—­a white sombrero, a blanket, and a Mexican lying face down.  The Yaqui had stolen upon this sentinel like a silent wind of death.  Just then a desert coyote wailed, and the wild cry fitted the darkness and the Yaqui’s deed.

Once under the dark lee of the river bank Yaqui caused another halt, and he disappeared as before.  It seemed to Gale that the Indian started to cross the pale level sandbed of the river, where stones stood out gray, and the darker line of opposite shore was visible.  But he vanished, and it was impossible to tell whether he went one way or another.  Moments passed.  The horses held heads up, looked toward the glimmering campfires and listened.