his braves with his friend there will be war.  Many braves will fall.  The White Prophet wishes to save them if he can.  He will go forth alone to kill his foe.  If the sun sets four times and the white man is not here, then Eschtah will send his great war-chief and his warriors.  They will kill whom they find at the white man's springs.  And thereafter half of all the white man's cattle that were stolen shall be Eschtah's, so that he watch over the water and range.'

  'Eschtah greets a chief,' answered the Indian.  'The White Prophet knows he will kill his enemy, but he is not sure he will return.  He is not sure that the little braves of his foe will fly like the winds, yet he hopes.  So he holds the Navajo back to the last.  Eschtah will watch the sun set four times.  If his white friend returns he will rejoice.  If he does not return the Navajo will send his warriors on the trail.'

  August Naab walked swiftly from the circle of light into the darkness; his heavy steps sounded on the porch, and in the hallway.  His three sons went toward their cabins with bowed heads and silent tongues.  Eschtah folded his blanket about him and stalked off into the gloom of the grove, followed by his warriors.

  Hare remained in the shadow of the cottonwood where he had stood unnoticed.  He had not moved a muscle since he had heard August Naab's declaration.  That one word of Naab's intention, 'Alone!' had arrested him.  For it had struck into his heart and mind.  It had paralyzed him with the revelation it brought; for Hare now knew as he had never known anything before, that he would forestall August Naab, avenge the death of Dave, and kill the rustler Holderness.  Through blinding shock he passed slowly into cold acceptance of his heritage from the desert.

  The two long years of his desert training were as an open page to Hare's unveiled eyes.  The life he owed to August Naab, the strength built up by the old man's knowledge of the healing power of plateau and range–these lay in a long curve between the day Naab had lifted him out of the White Sage trail and this day of the Mormon's extremity.  A long curve with Holderness's insulting blow at the beginning, his murder of a beloved friend at the end! 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.  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.  These men stirred in their graves, and from out the shadow of the cliff whispered the voice of Mescal's nameless father: 'Is there no one to rise up for this old hero of the desert?'

  Softly Hare slipped into his room.  Putting on coat and belt and catching up his rifle he stole out again stealthily, like an Indian.  In the darkness of the wagon-shed he felt for his saddle, and finding it, he groped with eager hands for the grain-box; raising the lid he filled a measure with grain, and emptied it into his saddle-bag.  Then lifting the saddle he carried it out of the yard, through the gate and across the lane to the corrals.  The wilder mustangs in the far corral began to kick and snort, and those in the corral where Black Bolly was kept trooped noisily to the bars.  Bolly whinnied and thrust her black muzzle over the fence.  Hare placed a caressing hand on her while he waited listening and watching.  It was not unusual for the mustangs to get restless at any time, and Hare was confident that this would pass without investigation.

  Gradually the restless stampings and suspicious snortings ceased, and Hare, letting down the bars, led Bolly out into the lane.  It was the work of a moment to saddle her; his bridle hung where he always kept it, on the pommel, and with nimble fingers he shortened the several straps to fit Bolly's head, and slipped the bit between her teeth.  Then he put up the bars of the gate.

  Before mounting he stood a moment thinking coolly, deliberately numbering the several necessities he must not forget–grain for Bolly, food for himself, his Colt and Winchester, cartridges, canteen, matches, knife. He inserted a hand into one of his saddle-bags expecting to find some strips of meat.  The bag was empty.  He felt in the other one, and under the grain he found what he sought.  The canteen lay in the coil of his lasso tied to the saddle, and its heavy canvas covering was damp to his touch.  With that he thrust the long Winchester into its saddle-sheath, and swung his leg over the mustang.

  The house of the Naabs was dark and still.  The dying council-fire cast flickering shadows under the black cottonwoods where the Navajos slept. The faint breeze that rustled the leaves brought the low sullen roar of the river.

  Hare guided Bolly into the thick dust of the lane, laid the bridle loosely on her neck for her to choose the trail, and silently rode out into the lonely desert night.

XIX - Unleashed

   Hare, listening breathlessly, rode on toward the gateway of the cliffs, and when he had passed the corner of the wall he sighed in relief. Spurring Bolly into a trot he rode forward with a strange elation.  He had slipped out of the oasis unheard, and it would be morning before August Naab discovered his absence, perhaps longer before he divined his purpose.  Then Hare would have a long start.  He thrilled with something akin to fear when he pictured the old man's rage, and wondered what change it would make in his plans.  Hare saw in mind Naab and his sons, and the Navajos sweeping in pursuit to save him from the rustlers.

  But the future must take care of itself, and he addressed all the faculties at his command to cool consideration of the present.  The strip of sand under the Blue Star had to be crossed at night–a feat which even the Navajos did not have to their credit.  Yet Hare had no shrinking; he had no doubt; he must go on.  As he had been drawn to the Painted Desert by a voiceless call, so now he was urged forward by something nameless.

  In the blackness of the night it seemed as if he were riding through a vaulted hall swept by a current of air.  The night had turned cold, the stars had brightened icily, the rumble of the river had died away when Bolly's ringing trot suddenly changed to a noiseless floundering walk. She had come upon the sand.  Hare saw the Blue Star in the cliff, and once more loosed the rein on Bolly's neck.  She stopped and champed her bit, and turned her black head to him as if to intimate that she wanted the guidance of a sure arm.  But as it was not forthcoming she stepped onward into the yielding sand.

  With hands resting idly on the pommel Hare sat at ease in the saddle. The billowy dunes reflected the pale starlight and fell away from him to darken in obscurity.  So long as the Blue Star remained in sight he kept his sense of direction; when it had disappeared he felt himself lost. Bolly's course seemed as crooked as the jagged outline of the cliffs. She climbed straight up little knolls, descended them at an angle, turned sharply at wind-washed gullies, made winding detours, zigzagged levels that shone like a polished floor; and at last (so it seemed to Hare) she doubled back on her trail.  The black cliff receded over the waves of sand; the stars changed positions, travelled round in the blue dome, and the few that he knew finally sank below the horizon.  Bolly never lagged; she was like the homeward - bound horse, indifferent to direction because sure of it, eager to finish the journey because now it was short.  Hare was glad though not surprised when she snorted and cracked her iron-shod hoof on a stone at the edge of the sand.  He smiled with tightening lips as he rode into the shadow of a rock which he recognized.  Bolly had crossed the treacherous belt of dunes and washes and had struck the trail on the other side.

  The long level of wind-carved rocks under the cliffs, the ridges of the desert, the miles of slow ascent up to the rough divide, the gradual descent to the cedars–these stretches of his journey took the night hours and ended with the brightening gray in the east.  Within a mile of Silver Cup Spring Hare dismounted, to tie folded pads of buckskin on Bolly's hoofs.  When her feet were muffled, he cautiously advanced on the trail for the matter of a hundred rods or more; then sheered off to the right into the cedars.  He led Bolly slowly, without rattling a stone or snapping a twig, and stopped every few paces to listen.  There was no sound other than the wind in the cedars.  Presently, with a gasp, he caught the dull gleam of a burned-out camp-fire.  Then his movements became as guarded, as noiseless as those of a scouting Indian.  The dawn broke over the red wall as he gained the trail beyond the spring.

  He skirted the curve of the valley and led Bolly a little way up the wooded slope to a dense thicket of aspens in a hollow.  This thicket encircled a patch of grass.  Hare pressed the lithe aspens aside to admit Bolly and left her there free.  He drew his rifle from its sheath and, after assuring himself that the mustang could not be seen or heard from below, he bent his steps diagonally up the slope.

  Every foot of this ground he knew, and he climbed swiftly until he struck the mountain trail.  Then, descending, he entered the cedars.  At last he reached a point directly above the cliff-camp where he had spent so many days, and this he knew overhung the cabin built by Holderness.  He stole down from tree to tree and slipped from thicket to thicket.  The sun, red as blood, raised a bright crescent over the red wall; the soft mists of the valley began to glow and move; cattle were working in toward the spring.  Never brushing a branch, never dislodging a

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