buckboard instead of holding it. For the first hour Hapgood was,
consequently, altogether too busy even to try to see the country about
him, and Conniston, riding behind, could make out little in the
darkness. The one thing of which he could be sure was that they were
leaving the floor of the desert behind, that they were climbing a
steep, narrow road which wound ever higher and higher in the hills.
Then finally the day broke, and he could see that they were already
deep in the brown hills which he had seen from Indian Creek. There was
scant vegetation, a few scattered, twisted, dwarfed trees, with
patches of brush in the ravines and hollows. Nowhere water, nowhere a
sprig of green grass. As in the flat land below here, there was only
barrenness and desolation and solitude.

As had been the case yesterday, so now to-day when the sun shot
suddenly into the sky the heat came with it. But already the three
travelers had climbed to the top of the hills where Pocket Pass led
across the uplands and were once more dropping down toward a gray
level floor. On a narrow bit of bench land, where for a space the
country road ran level, lined with ruts, gouged with uncomfortable
frequency into dust-concealed chuck-holes, Lonesome Pete pulled in his
horses and waited for Conniston to ride up to his side.

"In case you've got a sorta interest in the country we're goin' to
drop down in," he said, as he took advantage of the stop to roll a
cigarette, "you might jest take a look from here. This is what they
call Pocket Pass as we jest rode through. An' from this en' you can
see purty much everything as is worth seein' in this country an' a
whole hell of a lot as ain't." He made a wide sweep with his arm,
pointing southward and downward. "That there's where we're headed
for."