When he lost them, caution once
more slowed his advance.
The valley sloped up and narrowed, to head into an arroyo where
grass began to show gray between the clumps of mesquite. Shadows
formed ahead in the hollows, along the walls of the arroyo, under
the trees, and they seemed to creep, to rise, to float into a veil
cast by the background of bold mountains, at last to claim the
skyline. Night was not close at hand, but it was there in the east,
lifting upward, drooping downward, encroaching upon the west.
Gale dismounted to lead his horse, to go forward more slowly. He
had ridden sixty miles since morning, and he was tired, and a not
entirely healed wound in his hip made one leg drag a little. A
mile up the arroyo, near its head, lay the Papago Well. The need
of water for his horse entailed a risk that otherwise he could
have avoided. The well was on Mexican soil. Gale distinguished
a faint light flickering through the thin, sharp foliage. Campers
were at the well, and, whoever they were, no doubt they had
prevented Ladd from meeting Gale. Ladd had gone back to the
next waterhole, or maybe he was hiding in an arroyo to the eastward,
awaiting developments.
Gale turned his horse, not without urge of iron arm and persuasive
speech, for the desert steed scented water, and plodded back to the
edge of the arroyo, where in a secluded circle of mesquite he halted.
The horse snorted his relief at the removal of the heavy, burdened
saddle and accoutrements, and sagging, bent his knees, lowered himself
with slow heave, and plunged down to roll in the sand.
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