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Updated: June 21, 2025
In springtime the deep-rooted mesquites and palo verdes threw out the golden halo of their flowers until the cañons were aflame; the soggy sahuaros drank a little at each sparse downpour and defied the drought; all the world of desert plants flaunted their pigmented green against the barren sky as if in grim contempt; but the little streams ran weaker and weaker, creeping along under the sand to escape the pitiless sun.
Both white and black horses showed against the green, and a thin curling column of blue smoke rose lazily from amid the mesquites. "I reckon we'd better wait till dark, or mebbe daylight," said Jim Lash. "Let me figger some. Dick, what do you make of the outlet to this hole? Looks rough to me." With his glass Gale studied the narrow construction of walls and roughened rising floor.
As Gale turned to look back from the far bank of Forlorn River, he saw Nell waving a white scarf. He stood high in his stirrups and waved his sombrero. Then the mesquites hid the girl's slight figure, and Gale wheeled grim-faced to follow the rangers. They rode in single file with Ladd in the lead. He did not keep to the trail of the raiders all the time. He made short cuts.
Evidently that moment was one of boots, guns, and saddles for the raiders. Lowering the glass, Gale saw that Blanco Sol had started forward again. His gait was now a canter, and he had covered another quarter of a mile before horses and raiders appeared upon the outskirts of the mesquites. Then Blanco Sol stopped. His shrill, ringing whistle came distinctly to Gale's ears.
The almost miraculous appearance of the horse had dismayed them and filled them with superstitious fear. A few more shots served to scatter them and send them flying for cover. Kid Wolf vaulted into the saddle. Robbins was already on Blizzard's back. "Heads low!" sang out the Texan. He headed the horse for the mesquites. Crashing through them, they found themselves on the mesa plain once more.
She saw a horned toad, the color of stone, squatting low, hiding fearfully in the sand within reach of her whip. She extended the point of the whip, and the toad quivered and swelled and hissed. It was instinct with fight. The wind faintly stirred the thin foliage of the mesquites, making a mournful sigh. From far up in the foothills, barely distinguishable, came the scream of an eagle.
The valley grew clear of gray shadow except under leaning walls on the eastern side. Then a straight column of smoke rose from among the mesquites. Manifestly this was what Ladd had been awaiting. He took the long .405 from its sheath and tried the lever. Then he lifted a cartridge belt from the pommel of his saddle. Every ring held a shell and these shells were four inches long.
The horse leaped and, wheeling so swiftly that he nearly unseated Madeline, he charged back straight for the mesquites. Madeline spoke to him, cried angrily at him, pulled with all her strength upon the bridle, but was helplessly unable to stop him. He whistled a piercing blast. Madeline realized then that Stewart, his old master, had called him and that nothing could turn him.
"Tell me, Lucy," he said, drawing her back to his side as the party dipped out of sight in the interminable thicket of mesquites, "why have you never spoken of Kitty? Has anything dreadful happened? Please tell me quick, before she comes. I I won't know what to say." He twisted about and fixed an eye on the doorway, but Lucy held out a restraining hand.
This desolate wilderness with its forbidding silence and its dark promise of hell on the morrow this was not the place to unnerve oneself with thoughts of love and home. But the torturing paradox of the thing was that this was just the place and just the night for a man to be haunted. By and by Gale rose and walked down a shadowy aisle between the mesquites. On his way back the Yaqui joined him.
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