Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/171

Rh hostile, half string, half pulp. Here and there a barrel cactus promised liquid if they failed to find the spring. The going was hard on man and beast; the gray dust rose and settled on them, clogged like flour where the sweat broke through hide and clothing. After the first mile they spoke little.

An hour had passed when Jackson pointed out a purple fissure in the range.

"They say you can git through to the Pioche side that way. Just a one-horse trail." The fissure widened, became a wedge, a deep notch as they came abreast of it, half a mile away. They had been looking for a sign but had not been disappointed at not finding it. There was no regular trail in such country. A man chose his own ridges and traversed them, east or west, avoiding the draws where the sand shifted on the slopes.

Suddenly the mare, going gamely on though, with the roan, nostrils gaped wide and flanks heaved under the pitiless pounding of the sun and the drag of the loose soil, shied, sprang high and leaped aside. A sidewinder, a hooded, grey, mottled rattlesnake, had glided across her trail, disturbed by the vibration of her hoofs. As she came down one forefoot seemed to break through into a hollow, the burrow of some creature. She drew it out, still trembling at sight and smell of the serpent, set it down, and limped, badly, persistently. The lines that had been sinking deeper and deeper into Sheridan's face grew swiftly sharper as he dismounted and examined the foot.

"Bowed a tendon, Red," he said simply. "She