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Naab's few words had been full of meaning; the cold gloom so foreign to his nature, had been even more impressive. His had been the revolt of the meek. The gentle, the loving, the administering, the spiritual uses of his life had failed. Hare recalled what the desert had done to his own nature, how it had bred in him its impulse to fight, to resist, to survive.
"Watching the road. He's one of Dene's scouts." "Will Dene " One of Naab's sons came trotting back. "Think that was Larsen's pal. He was laying in wait for Snap." "I thought he was a scout for Dene," replied August. "Maybe he's that too." "Likely enough. Hurry along and keep the gray team going lively. They've had a week's rest."
"The rustlers rode off after Mescal she's gone!" panted Judith. Hare, spurred by the possibilities in the half-crazed girl's speech, cast caution to the winds and dashed forward into the glade. Naab's heavy steps thudded behind him. In the corner of the porch scared and stupefied children huddled in a heap. George and Billy bent over Dave, who sat white-faced against the steps.
Hare recalled how humbly he had expressed his gratitude to Naab, and the apparent impossibility of ever repaying him, and then Naab's reply: "Lad, you can never tell how one man may repay another." Hare could pay his own debt and that of the many wanderers who had drifted across the sands to find a home with the Mormon.
For Hare remembered the blow, and never would he forget Dave's last words. Yet unforgetable as these were, it was duty rather than revenge that called him. This was August Naab's hour of need. Hare knew himself to be the tool of inscrutable fate; he was the one to fight the old desert-scarred Mormon's battle.
Mescal engaged one point, Hare another, Dave another, and August Naab's roan thundered up and down the constantly broken line. All this while as the shepherds fought back the sheep, the flight continued faster eastward, farther canyonward. Each side gained, but the flock gained more toward the canyon than the drivers gained toward the oasis.
"Jack, look at that brand," said Mescal, pointing to a white-flanked steer. "There's an old brand like a cross, Father Naab's cross, and a new brand, a single bar. Together they make an H!" "Mescal! You've hit it. I remember that steer. He was a very devil to brand. He's the property of August Naab, and Holderness has added the bar, making a clumsy H. What a rustler's trick!
August Naab looked at him with gloomy eyes and stern shut mouth, an expression of righteous anger, helplessness and grief combined, the look of a man to whom obstacles had been nothing, at last confronted with crowning defeat. Hare realized that this son was Naab's first-born, best-loved, a thorn in his side, a black sheep. "Say, father, is that the spy you found on the trail?"
He's had Mormons up here, and two men not of his Church, and they did nothing. You've been ill, besides you're different. He will keep me with the sheep as long as he can, for two reasons because I drive them best, he says, and because Snap Naab's wife must be persuaded to welcome me in her home." "I'll stay, if I have to get a relapse and go down on my back again," declared Jack.
"Hare!" "I love her!" Naab's stern face relaxed. "Well, I'm beat! Though I don't see why you should be different from all the others. It was that time you spent with her on the plateau. I thought you too sick to think of a woman!" "Mescal cares for me," said Hare. "Ah! That accounts. Hare, did you play me fair?" "We tried to, though we couldn't help loving."
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