“There she is—there’s the Pass!” cried Sid triumphantly, as they topped the last of the awful sand ridges. His pointing finger showed them a river of desert vegetation below, a broad and rolling green river that flowed through the flat sandy plain of the Pass in masses of rich, living color. Tall green saguarros, like telegraph poles, rose in monumental spikes along the granite bases of the mountains on both sides. White fields of Bigelow’s choya barred their way, in big patches of them flung broadcast across the sands. Here and there the bright green puffball of a palo verde made a note of vivid color against the prevailing dark shiny green of the creosotes. At sight of all that verdure the horses broke into a run, twisting and threading through the flat bare sand lanes. The dogs, now desert-wise, galloped along beside them, barking excitedly and hardly noticing the choyas, avoiding them instinctively.
And then Ruler gave tongue. Ow-ow-ow! he sang, the first blessed musical notes of the chase that had come from his throat since they had left the Catalinas! Niltci whooped a shrill challenge and lashed his mustang to full speed. After him put out Big John, and then Scotty, glad of any excitement to take his mind off his troubles. Sid rode leisurely after them, merely glancing down at the tracks the dog had discovered in the sand.
“Buck mule deer—a small one. Here, Blaze!—Heel!” he called sternly to the Airedale, who had started bounding after Ruler. Sid halted his horse and watched the three riders racing down the Pass. The frantic bellows of Ruler now told him that the deer had been sighted, and presently Sid got a distant glimpse of him, a tiny gray shape bouncing stiff-legged as he dodged through the desert cactus garden.
“Mule deer all right! Guess we’ll stay out, Blazie,” he told the dog. “There are enough after him now to catch him with their bare hands! Let us try for mountain sheep, meanwhile.”
He turned the pinto toward the base of the Hornaday Mountains which rose in rugged gray-green masses abruptly from the sand floor of the Pass. Their summits were ridged with rough pinnacles of gray granite. What might be on the other side of those ridges at once intrigued the exploring instincts in the boy. He was rather glad of this chance for a lone investigating hike—with good old Blaze his sole companion!
At the base of the mountain, where rock sloped up steeply from sand, he checked his horse and a joyful exclamation burst from him. An eager whine came from Blaze, as he, too, snuffed in the sand. Here they had discovered a regular mountain sheep runway! The big cloven tracks, like pairs of roll biscuit prints, were plentiful and deeply graven in the sand. They ran both ways, but a vague impulse, coupled with a decided penchant for climbing up and exploring these mountains, led Sid to halt at the first lone track that led off upward from the main game trail. It was now nearly noon, and he knew that the sheep would be high in the mountains at this time of day.
He picketed Pinto out on a patch of grass and started up on foot. Helped by Blaze’s nose it would not be very hard to follow that track. Where a print lacked in the rocky soil, eager barks from the Airedale now led Sid on. They were climbing fast and furiously before they knew it, the impetuous dog leading Sid up and up the immense craggy slopes. Below him the garden of the Pass rolled out in a great gray plain. A mile down it the faint belling of Ruler told him that the mule deer was still leading them a busy chase. His own sheep tracks were rising toward the ridge in a series of steep bounds, climbing with ease where Sid had to haul himself up or make toilsome detours to avoid formidable white choya bushes. Sid hoped it was a ram. Since the Montana hunt for the Ring-Necked Grizzly he had not shot a single specimen of that king of American game animals, the Big-Horn. A Pinacate head, to match his Montana one, would look mightly well in the Colvin trophy den now located at their new ranch up in the Gila Cañon.
Presently Blaze let out a volleying bray and raced on up the rocks toward the ridge. There came a clatter of rolling stones, and Sid looked up to see a huge ram, followed by two ewes, silhouetted for an instant against the blue skyline. Immense curled horns encircled the big sheep’s head. For a moment he stopped and looked back, his superb head poised grandly, his horns branching out in regular symmetrical spirals, his white ears standing out like thumbs in front of the horns and his white nose, cleft with the black mouth and nostril lines, a circle of white against his brown neck.
Sid shouted to the dog sharply and raised his rifle, but before he could steady the sights the ram wheeled and was gone like a silent shadow. Blaze yelped and roared out his ferocious challenge, then at Sid’s repeated yells he turned and came back whining with impatience. The youth began to feel that Blaze would be a mere nuisance in this sheep hunting because of his lack of experience. Ruler would have circled craftily to head off the Big-Horn and drive him back on the hunter, but Blaze was always for the stern chase and the pitched battle!
Sternly ordering the dog to heel, Sid climbed on up cautiously and reconnoitered through the rocks over the ridge. A shallow arroyo lay between him and the next ridge, and beyond that he saw over the mountain back, beyond a void of purple distance, a flat red table of rock, etched sharply by the ragged saw-tooth of the ridge between him and it. Sid glanced curiously at that odd rock formation for an instant, then his eyes swept the hollow below for sight of that band of sheep. Blaze whined and tugged frantically at his collar. He had seen them already, long before Sid’s slower eyes could pick them out in that mass of rocks and sparse vegetation below.