Silvermane lengthened out and stretched lower with his white mane flying and his nose pointed level for the desert.
XI. THE DESERT-HAWK
TOWARD the close of the next day Jack Hare arrived at Seeping Springs. A pile of gray ashes marked the spot where the trimmed logs had lain. Round the pool ran a black circle hard packed into the ground by many hoofs. Even the board flume had been burned to a level with the glancing sheet of water. Hare was slipping Silvermane's bit to let him drink when he heard a halloo. Dave Naab galloped out of the cedars, and presently August Naab and his other sons appeared with a pack-train.
“Now you've played bob!” exclaimed Dave. He swung out of his saddle and gripped Hare with both hands. “I know what you've done; I know where you've been. Father will be furious, but don't you care.”
The other Naabs trotted down the slope and lined their horses before the pool. The sons stared in blank astonishment; the father surveyed the scene slowly, and then fixed wrathful eyes on Hare.
“What does this mean?” he demanded, with the sonorous roll of his angry voice.
Hare told all that had happened.
August Naab's gloomy face worked, and his eagle-gaze had in it a strange far-seeing light; his mind was dwelling upon his mystic power of revelation.
“I see—I see,” he said haltingly.