That night, they halted in broken country . . . more red buttes; hummocks of red; silt crust trenched by the crumbly cutways of spring freshets; sand hills billowing to a brick red sky, where the sun hung a dull blaze. There were tracks of the fleeing drovers having paused for a rest in the same place. It was a pebble bottom hot and dry. Wayland scooped under with his Service axe and an ooze of clay water seeped slowly up forming a brackish pool. He had to hold the little mule back from fighting the horses for that water. When the animals had drunk, he filled the water bag with the settlings. Towards three in the morning, the soft velvet pansy blue Desert dark broke to a sulphur mist. Wayland saddled horses and mule and wakened the old frontiersman.
"Eh, where's this?" He came to himself heavily. "Wayland, is this hell-broth of a sulphur stew doin' me? Has y'r Desert got me, Wayland?"
"No, sir, when the Desert gets you, it gets you raving mad with fever. Chains won't hold you! This soggy sleep is all right. Long as you sleep, you'll keep your head!"
All the same, the Ranger noticed that the old man ate scarcely any breakfast. For those people who think that the Ranger's life consists of an easy all day jog-trot, it would be well to set down exactly of what that breakfast consisted. It consisted of slap jacks made with water sediment. Both men were afraid to draw on the water from the skin bag for tea.
They passed dead pools that day, places where Desert travellers had stuck up posts to mark a spring; but where the Service axe failed to find water below the saline crust. Then, Wayland knew why the sulphur dust drift moved so slowly against the horizon. The outlaws had not found water. Horses and men were fagging. A velveteen coat had been thrown aside to lighten weight; from the dust markings one horse seemed to have fallen; and the load had been lightened still more by casting off half sacks of flour and some canvas tenting; but the tracks of the lame horse picking the soft places along the trail showed drops of blood. Had it cut itself on the glassy lava rocks; or was it the hoof? A little farther ahead, the same horse had fallen again to its knees, rolling over headlong; and the other tracks doubled back confusedly where the riders had come to help.
The Ranger smiled, though the yellow heat danced in blood clots before his blistered vision. He had had to put the old frontiersman back on his horse three times. The stirrup was wrong; or the saddle was slipping; or . . . what alarmed Wayland was each time he had stopped, the old man was stooping as if to follow the wavering outline of invisible water. Then, when the Ranger tried to count how many days they had been out, he found he couldn't. He had lost track: the days had slipped into nights and the nights into days; and he suddenly realized that his head pounded like a steel derrick; that the crackling of the dry sage brush leaves snapped something strung and irritable in his own nerves. There was no longer a drowsy hum in his ears. It was a wild rushing.
Once, the horses shuffled to a dead stop. Wayland looked up from the dancing sand at his feet. He rubbed his eyes and looked again.
"I keep thinking I see a white horse lagging behind that dust drift. What puzzles me is whether they are trying to get out of the Desert or lose us in it. While we are seeing them, you can bet they are seeing us! There hasn't been a yard for a mile back, where the hoof tracks weren't bloody. They'll lose a horse if they keep on to-day: then, they'll be without a packer; but if they are plumb up against it, why don't they face round and fight? They are three to our two? They could hide behind any of these sand rolls and pot us crossing the sinks; but if they are not at the end of their tether, why don't they hustle and get out of sight? If they aren't played out, they could outride us in half a day."
The old man was shading his eyes and gazing across the sun glare. Wayland noticed that he was steadying himself in the saddle by the pummel.
"Is my eye playing me tricks, Wayland; or do A see something stuck on yon bush along the way? First glance, it looks like the leaf of a note book. Keep looking, it might be a tent a couple of miles away. That used to happen when we were buildin' bridges in the Rockies. Surveyors crossing upper snows would stick up a message in neck of a ginger ale bottle: then, when we'd come along with the line men after trampin' the snow for hours, we'd mistake the thing for a man with a white hat till we almost tumbled over the bottle. Is it the Desert playin' me tricks, Wayland; or do A see something? Look, . . . where that bit of brush grows against the lava rock there."