Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/121



the edge of the Chico Mesa, where it broke down to the desert in high walls of rock and friable dirt, weathered, decomposed, heaped and split and crevassed, unscalable save for the wedge where one trail uncoiled to the place where no man sought to go willingly; the cacti were assembled in great ranks. With them were agaves, candlewood, soapweed, mesquite and creosote bush but they were only a scattering gathering to the gray-green companies marshaled against the waste. Prickly pear, hedgehog cactus, torch thistles, old-man cactus, Judas Tree, and barrel cactus, three-fourths of a hundred varieties, from the button tops to the giant columnar chayas, fleshy, thorny growths that formed impenetrable thickets or stood in serried array.

Through them at the best speed they could make, the lithe ponies dodging and twisting, spines catching at leather chaparejos or cloth, Sheridan and Jackson rode against the moonrise. To this issue they clung stubbornly, clutching at the one hope as a drowning man grabs for the proverbial straw.

Glittering stars pierced the sky and made a half-light, a star dusk, but they figured that the cruel gang gathered under Hollister would wait to see 103