master. But as Pat no longer suffered from
hunger, he complacently accepted the return of the
double load. Then all moved forward. Pat jogged
out of the canyon, turning to the right on the
desert, and moved rapidly north in the shadow of
the hills. He held to his stride, and toward noon,
rounding a giant ridge projecting into the desert
from the hills, he saw ahead on his right, perhaps
two miles distant across a basin, the mouth of another
canyon. Evidently his master saw it also,
and obviously it contained danger, for he jerked
Pat down to a walk. Almost instantly he knew
that the danger was real, for the man, sounding
a sharp command to the others, brought him to
a full stop. Then followed an excited discussion,
and, when it ended, Pat, gripped in vague uneasiness,
found himself urged forward at top speed.
Yet in a dim way he knew what was wanted of
him. He flung himself into a long stride and
dashed across the wide basin, across the mouth
of the canyon, into the shadow of the hills again.
Breathless, he slackened his pace with thirty excited
horses around him, mad swirling clouds of
dust all about, and before him the oppressive stillness
of the desert. They were safely past the
danger zone.

He pressed on at a slow canter. Ahead the mesa
revealed numerous sand-dunes, large and small,
rising into the monotonous sky-line. Plunging
among them, he mounted some easily, others he
skirted as easily, and once, to avoid an unusually
large one, he dropped down into the bed of an

[[247]]

p246 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p247w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p248

v?