Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/170

152 "He won't come back," said Sheridan shortly. "Give Red the cartridges for the rifle, Thora. Wish us good luck."

As they looked back, once, they saw the big figure of Thora on the tired, white, bony nag, plugging by the side of Juanita, tiny on her chico bronco. Thora's hand gripped one rein of the other's bridle.

"She sure scared the truth out of Juanita," said Red while they rode at a steady lope.

"Willed it out of her, I fancy," returned Sheridan. He looked anxiously at the sun. It was close to the zenith, then- shadows had dwindled, shrinking beneath the bellies of their mounts. It was within an hour of noon.

"What kind of travel between here and the rocks, Red?" he asked.

"None too good. Gets worse. Prit' nigh all desert the last ha'f . There is a spring, if I can locate it, 'bout eight mile in. We'll water up."

His words had a hidden meaning. They had no canteens with them. They held in the horses, walk and lope and walk again, under the burning sun. The character of the mesa began to slowly change. In the long ago it had been heavily crevassed. Now these splits were nearly filled with the powdery sand, forming a series of ridges with draws between, sometimes quite deep.

To their right the foothills radiated the heat, backed by the higher cliffs of the range, gradually steepening until they were too sheer to sustain tree life. Cactus grew thick as weeds, sprawling, pillared, branching growths of greyish blue and green, barbed,