Far ahead, between two huge mesas where the trail mounted over a pass, a long line of dust clouds marked the position of the horses that had escaped from the corral.  Those that had been stolen would travel straight and true for home, and perhaps would lead the others with them.  The raiders were left on the desert without guns or mounts.

Blanco Sol walked or jog-trotted six miles to the hour.  At that gait fifty miles would not have wet or turned a hair of his dazzling white coat.  Gale, bearing in mind the ever-present possibility of encountering more raiders and of being pursued, saved the strength of the horse.  Once out of sight of Papago Well, Gale dismounted and walked beside the horse, steadying with one firm hand the helpless, dangling Yaqui.

The sun cleared the eastern ramparts, and the coolness of morning fled as if before a magic foe.  The whole desert changed.  The grays wore bright; the mesquites glistened; the cactus took the silver hue of frost, and the rocks gleamed gold and red.  Then, as the heat increased, a wind rushed up out of the valley behind Gale, and the hotter the sun blazed down the swifter rushed the wind.  The wonderful transparent haze of distance lost its bluish hue for one with tinge of yellow.  Flying sand made the peaks dimly outlined.

Gale kept pace with his horse.  He bore the twinge of pain that darted through his injured hip at every stride.  His eye roved over the wide, smoky prospect seeking the landmarks he knew.  When the wild and bold spurs of No Name Mountains loomed through a rent in flying clouds of sand he felt nearer home.  Another hour brought him abreast of a dark, straight shaft rising clear from a beetling escarpment.  This was a monument marking the international boundary line.  When he had passed it he had his own country under foot.  In the heat of midday he halted in the shade of a rock, and, lifting the Yaqui down, gave him a drink.  Then, after a long, sweeping survey of the surrounding desert, he removed Sol’s saddle and let him roll, and took for himself a welcome rest and a bite to eat.

The Yaqui was tenacious of life.  He was still holding his own.  For the first time Gale really looked at the Indian to study him.  He had a large head nobly cast, and a face that resembled a shrunken mask.  It seemed chiseled in the dark-red, volcanic lava of his Sooner wilderness.  The Indian’s eyes were always black and mystic, but this Yaqui’s encompassed all the tragic desolation of the desert.  They were fixed on Gale, moved only when he moved.  The Indian was short and broad, and his body showed unusual muscular development, although he seemed greatly emaciated from starvation or illness.

Gale resumed his homeward journey.  When he got through the pass he faced a great depression, as rough as if millions of gigantic spikes had been driven by the hammer of Thor into a seamed and cracked floor.  This was Altar Valley.  It was a chaos of arroyo’s, canyons, rocks, and ridges all mantled with cactus, and at its eastern end it claimed the dry bed of Forlorn River and water when there was any.