Jim Lash remarked how
cleverly they had fooled the rebels.
"Shore they'll be comin' along," replied Ladd.
They built a fire, cooked and ate. The Yaqui spoke only one
word: "Sleep." Blankets were spread. Mercedes dropped into a
deep slumber, her head on Thorne's shoulder. Excitement kept
Throne awake. The two rangers dozed beside the fire. Gale
shared the Yaqui's watch. The sun began to climb and the icy
edge of dawn to wear away. Rabbits bobbed their cotton tails
under the mesquite. Gale climbed a rocky wall above the arroyo
bank, and there, with command over the miles of the back-trail, he
watched.
It was a sweeping, rolling, wrinkled, and streaked range of desert
that he saw, ruddy in the morning sunlight, with patches of cactus
and mesquite rough-etched in shimmering gloom. No Name Mountains
split the eastern sky, towering high, gloomy, grand, with purple veils
upon their slopes. They were forty miles away and looked five.
Gale thought of the girl who was there under their shadow.
Yaqui kept the horses bunched, and he led them from one little
park of galleta grass to another. At the end of three hours he took
them to water. Upon his return Gale clambered down from his
outlook, the rangers grew active. Mercedes was awakened; and soon
the party faced westward, their long shadows moving before them.
Yaqui led with Blanco Diablo in a long, easy lope. The arroyo
washed itself out into flat desert, and the greens began to shade
into gray, and then the gray into red.
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