“Better varnish me, then, before ye take me out again.”

Less than a pint of water had seeped into the little kettle; and this they used for their tea, mixing the flour with the stale water from the mud pool.  Then, they lighted pipes and lay back to rest.

Wayland had placed the kettle back under the drip of the ledge.

“A can understand Moses smitin’ the rocks for a spring; and such a wind as we had to-day blowin’ the Red Sea dry,” observed the old man dreamily.

“I guess if you get any miracle down to close quarters, you’ll sort it out all right without busting common sense,” returned Wayland.

He wasn’t thinking of the day’s hardships.

The silver strip of the far mountains had faded; first, the purple base; then, the melting opal summit.  At last, the restless wind had sunk.  The red rocks of the mesa darkened to spectral shapes.  The heat, the scorch, the torrid pain of the day had calmed to the soft velvet caress of the indigo Desert night.  Twice, the Ranger dozed off to wake with a start, with a sense of her hand warning danger.  Always before, the thought of her had come in an involuntary consciousness whelmed of happiness; but to-night, was it . . . fear?

He rose and looked about.  Two of the horses lay at rest.  The mule stood munching near.  The old frontiersman slept heavily, his face troubled and upturned to the sky.  Wayland noticed the livid tinge of the lips, the shadows round the eye sockets, the protuberance of veins on the backs of the old man’s hands.  The sky seemed to come down lower as the red twilight darkened; and he could hear not a sound but the crunch of the grazing mule and the slow drop, drop, drop of the water seeping from the terra cotta ledge.  The stars were beginning to prick through the indigo darkness.  In another hour, it would be bright enough to travel by starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest, slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick scurrying on again; then a hand touched him!  Wayland sprang to his feet half asleep.  He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the form faded.  The pack mule had flounced up with a cough.  A white horse stood between the banks of the arroyo.  There was a steel flash in the dark, the rip of a quick shot, and the kettle bounced from the ledge with a jangling spill.

“What’s that?” yelled the old frontiersman, jumping for the horses.

Wayland was pumping his repeater into the darkness; but the clatter of hoof beats down the dry gravel bed answered the question.

“It’s the signal for us to get up,” answered the Ranger.  “I don’t mind the blackguard’s bad aim so much as I do the upset of that kettle.  Every drop of water is spilled.”

“A’m thinkin’ ’twas the kettle they aimed at, and not us, my boy!”