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Updated: June 3, 2025
Presently he came to a place where Wildfire had doubled on his trail and had turned up a side canyon. The climb out was hard on Slone, if not on Nagger. Once up, Slone found himself upon a wide, barren plateau of glaring red rock and clumps of greasewood and cactus. The plateau was miles wide, shut in by great walls and mesas of colored rock. The afternoon sun beat down fiercely.
Below him were ledges of rock in marvellous colours, yellow and gray, crimson and green piled one upon another, with the strange light of the noonday sun playing over them and turning their colours into a blaze of glory. Beyond was a stretch of sand, broken here and there by sage-brush, greasewood, or cactus rearing its prickly spines grotesquely.
In a clump of greasewood he dismounted, and, leaving the reins hanging to the saddle-horn, struck Black Boyar on the flank. The horse leaped toward the Moonstone Trail. The tramp disappeared in the brush. Louise Lacharme, more beautiful than roses, strolled across the vine-shadowed porch of the big ranch-house and sat on the porch rail opposite her uncle.
At last the way sloped downward, and they reached more level ground, with wide stretches of open plain, dotted here and there with sage-brush and greasewood. She had been hungry back there before she came upon the dead man; but now the hunger had gone from her, and in its place was only faintness. Still, she dared not stop long to eat.
Whatever he saw he kept to himself; but presently he began to wriggle backward, keeping the greasewood clump, and afterwards certain rocks and little ridges, between himself and a view of the point he had fixed upon as the spot where the shooter had stood.
That night he camped where there was dry grass, but no water. Next day he followed Wildfire down and down, over the endless swell of rolling red ridges, bare of all but bleached white grass and meager greasewood, always descending in the face of that painted desert of bold and ragged steps.
He ministered to thirsty dog and horse in silence, his mind revolving the grim fact of his situation. His little fire of greasewood threw a wan circle into the surrounding blackness. Not a sound hinted of life. He longed for even the bark of a coyote. Silvermane stooped motionless with tired head. Wolf stretched limply on the sand.
"Don't do that again" he growled. "I know when a man's got the drop on me." "I was afraid your education had been neglected" the hold-up man retorted pleasantly. "Throw out the box! No, not you. The driver will throw it out. You keep your hands up." The express box dropped into the greasewood beside the trail with a heavy metallic thud that augured a neat profit for the man behind the wall.
New-born clouds, rushing out of the ruck of flying dirt, cast a cold, damp shadow upon the earth and hurried past; white-crested thunder-caps, piling-up above the Four Peaks, swept resolutely down to meet them; and the storm wind, laden with the smell of greasewood and wetted alkali, lashed the gaunt desert bushes mercilessly as it howled across the plain.
Overcome by his pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not want to have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to continue with the train. After this scene followed days of hot travelling over hard, gravelly plains, thinly coated with grass and dotted with cacti, mezquit trees, the leafless palo verde, and the greasewood bush.
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