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The horses sensed the excitement and the tenseness that goes before a storm and raced through the creek-bed without any urging. Even the old horse, Dolly, needed neither spur nor whip. Snorting and blowing in good earnest, she held her own with the more spirited animals as they picked their way around boulders and pools of water. At the first drop of rain, Kit drew in her pony.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail.
"Ay, Chihuahua!" he ejaculated in shrill surprise and reined in his horse to gaze. The young hobo was running and, not far ahead, the Ground Hog was fleeing before him. They ran through bushy gulches and over cactus-crowned ridges where the sahuaros rose up like giant sentinels; until at last, as he came to the sandy creek-bed, the black hobo stood at bay.
A naked creek-bed showed white and shimmering at the bottom of the slope. Again a slug whined through the sunlight and Cheyenne's hat spun from his head and settled squarely on a low bush. It was characteristic of Cheyenne that he grabbed for his hat and got it as he dashed past. "Keep the change," said Cheyenne as he ducked beneath a branch and straightened up again.
These springs have their origin at the foot of the hill on the eastern side of this pass, and percolate into the creek-bed, where the water becomes impregnated with salt or soda. The water in the open holes in the creek-bed is always running; I thought the supply came from up the creek now, however, I find it comes from these fresh-water springs. I branded a tree in this pass E. Giles with date.
A mile farther, and he rode over a low shoulder of the butte he was passing, ambled down the long slope on the far side, crossed another rounded hill, followed down a dry creek-bed at the foot of it, sought with his eye for a practicable crossing and went headlong down a steep, twenty-foot bank; rattled the loose rocks in the dry, narrow channel and went forging up a bank steeper than the first, with creaking saddle-leather and grunting horse, and struck again easy going.
Over these the road to the railroad climbed and dipped with wearisome regularity until at last it dropped down into the creek-bed again and followed its dry, sandy course. Not half an hour had passed from the time the second hobo left till Old Bunk had started after him, yet so fast had he traveled that he was almost to the creek bed before Bunker Hill caught sight of him.
The sun rose clear for the hundredth time over the shoulder of the Four Peaks; it mounted higher, glowing with a great light, and the smooth round tops of the bowlders shone like half-buried skulls along the creek-bed; it swung gloriously up to its zenith and the earth palpitated with a panting heat.
Just where the tree had fallen the creek-bed was rocky and uneven; the water eddied and whirled and plunged noisily into its pools. Terry, clambering up from her side of the big log, heard only the shouting of the brook.
There were some nice little sheets of water in the creek-bed, but scarcely large enough to be permanent. The country was now a sort of stony plateau, having low, flat-topped, tent-shaped table-lands occurring at intervals all over it; it was quite open, and no timber existed except upon the banks of the watercourses.
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