"Durn it, why is it you never take me serious?" he complained. "I can
name over all the mean things you are, and you just waggle one ear, much
as to say, 'Aw, hell! Same ole tune, and nothing to it but noise.' Some
of these days you're going to get your pedigree read to you--and read
right!" He leaned forward and lovingly lifted Rabbit's mane, holding it
for a minute or two away from the sweaty neck. "Sure's hot out here
to-day, ain't it, pardner?" he murmured, and let the mane fall again into
place. "Kinda fries out the grease, don't it? If young Calvert's got any
hoss-feed in camp, I'm going to beg some off him. Get along, the faster
you go, the quicker you'll get there."

The desert gave place to scattered, brown cobblestones of granite. Rabbit
picked his way carefully among these, setting his feet down daintily in
the interstices of the rocks. He climbed a long slope that proved itself
to be a considerable hill when one looked back at the desert below. The
farther side was more abrupt, and he took it in patient zigzags where the
footing promised some measure of security. At the bottom he turned short
off to the right and made his way briskly along a rough wagon trail that
hugged the hillside.

"Fresh tracks going in--and then out again," Starr announced musingly
to Rabbit. "Maybe young Calvert hired a load of grub brought out; that,
or he's had a visitor in the last day or two--maybe a week back,
though; this dry ground holds tracks a long while. Go on, it's only a
mile or so now."

The trail took a sudden turn toward the bottom of the wide depression as
though it wearied of dodging rocks and preferred the loose sand below. Of
his own accord Rabbit broke into a steady lope, flinging his head