Then up out of the gulf of the west swept a bellowing wind and a black pall and terrible flashes of lightning and thunder like the end of the world—­fury, blackness, chaos, the desert storm.

XVII

THE WHISTLE OF A HORSE

At the ranch-house at Forlorn River Belding stood alone in his darkened room.  It was quiet there and quiet outside; the sickening midsummer heat, like a hot heavy blanket, lay upon the house.

He took up the gun belt from his table and with slow hands buckled it around his waist.  He seemed to feel something familiar and comfortable and inspiring in the weight of the big gun against his hip.  He faced the door as if to go out, but hesitated, and then began a slow, plodding walk up and down the length of the room.  Presently he halted at the table, and with reluctant hands he unbuckled the gun belt and laid it down.

The action did not have an air of finality, and Belding knew it.  He had seen border life in Texas in the early days; he had been a sheriff when the law in the West depended on a quickness of wrist; he had seen many a man lay down his gun for good and all.  His own action was not final.  Of late he had done the same thing many times and this last time it seemed a little harder to do, a little more indicative of vacillation.  There were reasons why Belding’s gun held for him a gloomy fascination.

The Chases, those grasping and conscienceless agents of a new force in the development of the West, were bent upon Belding’s ruin, and so far as his fortunes at Forlorn River were concerned, had almost accomplished it.  One by one he lost points for which he contended with them.  He carried into the Tucson courts the matter of the staked claims, and mining claims, and water claims, and he lost all.  Following that he lost his government position as inspector of immigration; and this fact, because of what he considered its injustice, had been a hard blow.  He had been made to suffer a humiliation equally as great.  It came about that he actually had to pay the Chases for water to irrigate his alfalfa fields.  The never-failing spring upon his land answered for the needs of household and horses, but no more.

These matters were unfortunate for Belding, but not by any means wholly accountable for his worry and unhappiness and brooding hate.  He believed Dick Gale and the rest of the party taken into the desert by the Yaqui had been killed or lost.  Two months before a string of Mexican horses, riderless, saddled, starved for grass and wild for water, had come in to Forlorn River.  They were a part of the horses belonging to Rojas and his band.  Their arrival complicated the mystery and strengthened convictions of the loss of both pursuers and pursued.  Belding was wont to say that he had worried himself gray over the fate of his rangers.