“Daddy, get the burros!” cried the girl. “We’re going!”
Sheriff Bob Long looked down from a ledge above a narrow, deep, boulder-strewn, awe-inspiring cañon and drew in his breath sharply. Below he saw two human beings and three animals.
“I knew he’d try it,” Long said wonderingly to himself. “I thought he’d try it afoot. But the girl! And they’re going to try to cross Death Flat!”
His look of wonder increased, and he made no move toward the weapons in his holsters.
“I wonder now,” he mused. “Can they make it? I wonder–––”
He scowled and looked about with a frowning stare. His gaze again shifted downward. Suddenly he shrugged and put the wrong end of his unlighted cigar in his mouth.
“That’s the queerest cigar I ever had,” he growled, as he made his way to his horse. “It won’t stay lit because it wants to be swallowed.”
He mounted and rode slowly back toward the far-reaching stretches of desert. Once he halted and turned in his saddle for a backward look.