fanatical, ruthless, and unchangeable.  Shefford did not expect to meet Mormons of this kind.  But any man of that religion would have interested him.  Besides this, Whisner seemed to bring him closer to that wild secret canyon he had come West to find.  Shefford was somewhat amazed and discomfited to have his polite and friendly overtures repulsed.  Whisner might have been an Indian.  He was cold, incommunicative, aloof; and there was something about him that made the sensitive Shefford feel his presence was resented.

Presently Shefford strolled on to the corral, which was full of shaggy mustangs.  They snorted and kicked at him.  He had a half-formed wish that he would never be called upon to ride one of those wild brutes, and then he found himself thinking that he would ride one of them, and after a while any of them.  Shefford did not understand himself, but he fought his natural instinctive reluctance to meet obstacles, peril, suffering.

He traced the white-bordered little stream that made the pool in the corral, and when he came to where it oozed out of the sand under the bluff he decided that was not the spring which had made Kayenta famous.  Presently down below the trading-post he saw a trough from which burros were drinking.  Here he found the spring, a deep well of eddying water walled in by stones, and the overflow made a shallow stream meandering away between its borders of alkali, like a crust of salt.  Shefford tasted the water.  It bit, but it was good.

Shefford had no trouble in making friends with the lazy sleepy-eyed burros.  They let him pull their long ears and rub their noses, but the mustangs standing around were unapproachable.  They had wild eyes; they raised long ears and looked vicious.  He let them alone.

Evidently this trading-post was a great deal busier than Red Lake.  Shefford counted a dozen Indians lounging outside, and there were others riding away.  Big wagons told how the bags of wool were transported out of the wilds and how supplies were brought in.  A wide, hard-packed road led off to the east, and another, not so clearly defined, wound away to the north.  And Indian trails streaked off in all directions.

Shefford discovered, however, when he had walked off a mile or so across the valley to lose sight of the post, that the feeling of wildness and loneliness returned to him.  It was a wonderful country.  It held something for him besides the possible rescue of an imprisoned girl from a wild canyon.

. . . . . . . . . . .

That night after supper, when Withers and Shefford sat alone before the blazing logs in the huge fireplace, the trader laid his hand on Shefford’s and said, with directness and force: 

“I’ve lived my life in the desert.  I’ve met many men and have been a friend to most. . . .  You’re no prospector or trader or missionary?”

“No,” replied Shefford.