Abe made no reply, possibly because he also had fancies—fancies
that he could not tell even to the Seer.
It is astonishing what a great cloud of dust five
animals can stir up on a desert trail. As the
little outfit jogged slowly along, the great yellow
mass rolled up into the air high above their heads
and hung—a long, slow-drifting streamer—above
the trail until it vanished in the distance.
Barbara, who was riding out from town on the Mesa,
saw that cloud and stopped to study it intently for
a few moments as if debating some question. Then
touching her animal with the spur, she set off rapidly
in the direction of the approaching horsemen; while
the two men watched the dust that arose from the single
horse’s feet with the interest that travelers
in lonely lands always feel in any life that chances
to come their way.
“Abe, that’s a woman,” exclaimed
the Seer after a time.
Abe said nothing. He had discovered that interesting
fact some moments before.
The engineer rose in his stirrups. “Abe,
I’ll bet a month’s salary it’s Barbara.”
“I’m not gambling,” returned the
other, smiling at his companion’s excitement.
“I know it is.”
The big engineer dropped into his saddle with a grunt
of disgust. “Young man, you’ve got
eyes like a buzzard,” he said, twisting about
to face his companion. “By all traditions
I suppose I should say ‘eagle,’ but you
certainly don’t look much like that noble king
of birds. You’re carrying dirt enough to
bury a horse.”
The Seer took off his sombrero and began beating the
dust from his own shoulders, while the surveyor looked
on in silent amusement.
“She’ll think by the dust you’re
a-raisin’ that there’s some kind of a
scrap goin’ on and that she’d better head
the other way.”
“Not much she wouldn’t head the other
way from a scrap. She would come on all the faster.
I thought you knew Barbara better than that.”
He replaced his hat. “Why Abe, one time
when she was—”
The surveyor interrupted his Chief by standing up
in his stirrups in turn and swinging his hat in greeting,
while the Seer, in waving his own sombrero and whooping
like a wild man, forgot what he was about to relate.
The girl came on at a run and—guiding her
horse between the two dust-covered men—held
out a hand to each.
The standard of the west.
Three days after the Seer’s letters to Abe and
Barbara telling them that James Greenfield and his
associates would finance an expedition to make the
preliminary surveys in The King’s Basin Desert,
the west-bound overland dropped a passenger in Rubio
City from New York.
The stranger was really a fine looking young man with
the appearance of being exceptionally well-bred and
well-kept. Indeed the most casual of observers
would not have hesitated to pronounce him a thoroughbred
and a good individual of the best type that the race
has produced.
