"I notice you paid yore brother and Miller when we gave an order for it,"
Hart retorted with heat.

"A different proposition. They hadn't signed up for this drive like you
boys did. You'll get what's comin' to you when I pay off the others.
You'll not get it before."

The two riders retired sulkily. They felt it was not fair, but on the
trail the foreman is an autocrat. From the other riders they borrowed a
few dollars and gave in exchange orders on their pay checks.

Within an hour they were on the road. Fresh horses had been roped from
the remuda and were carrying them at an even Spanish jog-trot through the
night. The stars came out, clear and steady above a ghostly world at
sleep. The desert was a place of mystery, of vast space peopled by
strange and misty shapes.

The plain stretched vaguely before them. Far away was the thin outline of
the range which enclosed the valley. The riders held their course by
means of that trained sixth sense of direction their occupation had
developed.

They spoke little. Once a coyote howled dismally from the edge of the
mesa. For the most part there was no sound except the chuffing of the
horses' movements and the occasional ring of a hoof on the baked ground.

The gray dawn, sifting into the sky, found them still traveling. The
mountains came closer, grew more definite. The desert flamed again, dry,
lifeless, torrid beneath a sky of turquoise. Dust eddies whirled in