a hurricane.  The wind roared down upon them like a blast from hell.  Daylight blotted out, and where a moment before the sun had hung like a burnished brazen shield, was only a dim lightening of the impenetrable fog of grey-black dust.  The girl opened her eyes and instantly they seemed filled with a thousand needles that bit and seared and caused hot stinging tears to well between the tight-closed lids.  She gasped for breath and her lips and tongue went dry.  Sand gritted against her teeth as she closed them, and she tried in vain to spit the dust from her mouth.  She was aware that someone was tying the scarf about her head, and close against her ear she heard the voice of the Texan:  “Breathe through your nose as long as you can an’ then through your teeth.  Hang onto your saddle-horn, I’ve got your reins.  An’ whatever you do, keep your eyes shut, this sand will cut ’em out if you don’t.”  She turned her face for an instant toward the west, and the sand particles drove against her exposed forehead and eyelids with a force that caused the stinging tears to flow afresh.  Then she felt her horse move slowly, jerkily at first, then more easily as the Texan swung him in beside his own.

“We’re all right now,” he shouted at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the roar of the wind.  And then it seemed to the girl they rode on and on for hours without a spoken word.  She came to tell by the force of the wind whether they travelled along ridges, or wide low basins, or narrow coulees.  Her lips dried and cracked, and the fine dust and sand particles were driven beneath her clothing until her skin smarted and chafed under their gritty torture.  Suddenly the wind seemed to die down and the horses stopped.  She heard the Texan swing to the ground at her side, and she tried to open her eyes but they were glued fast.  She endeavoured to speak and found the effort a torture because of the thick crusting of alkali dust and sand that tore at her broken lips.  The scarf was loosened and allowed to fall about her neck.  She could hear the others dismounting and the loud sounds with which the horses strove to rid their nostrils of the crusted grime.

“Just a minute, now, an’ you can open your eyes,” the Texan’s words fell with a dry rasp of his tongue upon his caked lips.  She heard a slight splashing sound and the next moment the grateful feel of water was upon her burning eyelids, as the Texan sponged at them with a saturated bit of cloth.

“The water-hole!” she managed to gasp.

“There’s water here,” answered the cowboy, evasively, “hold still, an’ in a minute you can open your eyes.”  Very gently he continued to sponge at her lids.  Her eyes opened and she started back with a sharp cry.  The three men before her were unrecognizable in the thick masks of dirt that encased their faces—­masks that showed only thin red slits for eyes, and thick, blood-caked excrescences where lips should have been.