your cattle. Yes, I know. You're strong, stronger than any of us, far
off in your desert oasis, hemmed in by walls, cut off by canyons, guarded
by your Navajo friends. But Holderness is creeping slowly on you. He'll
ignore your water rights and drive your stock. Soon Dene will steal
cattle under your very eyes. Don't make them enemies."

"I can't pass by this helpless man," rolled out August Naab's sonorous
voice.

Suddenly, with livid face and shaking hand, Cole pointed westward.
"There! Dene and his band! See, under the red wall; see the dust, not ten
miles away. See them?"

The desert, gray in the foreground, purple in the distance, sloped to the
west. Eyes keen as those of hawks searched the waste, and followed the
red mountain rampart, which, sheer in bold height and processional in its
craggy sweep, shut out the north. Far away little puffs of dust rose
above the white sage, and creeping specks moved at a snail's pace.

"See them? Ah! then look, August Naab, look in the heavens above for my
prophecy," cried Cole, fanatically. "The red sunset--the sign of the
times--blood!"

A broad bar of dense black shut out the April sky, except in the extreme
west, where a strip of pale blue formed background for several clouds of
striking color and shape. They alone, in all that expanse, were dyed in
the desert's sunset crimson. The largest projected from behind the dark
cloud-bank in the shape of a huge fist, and the others, small and round,
floated below. To Cole it seemed a giant hand, clutching, with
inexorable strength, a bleeding heart. His terror spread to his