crowd, that if you lived at all, you would almost certainly head for
the hills as I knew you had no compass, and you would not be able to
see anything else. So I rode along the plain which stretches between the
desert and the mountains, keeping on the edge of the sand-hills. I rode
all day, but when night came I halted, since I could see no more. There
I sat in that great place, thinking, and after an hour or two I observed
Pharaoh prick his ears and look toward the west. So I also started
toward the west, and presently I thought that I saw one faint streak
of light which seemed to go upward, and therefore couldn't come from a
falling star, but might have come from a rifle fired toward the sky.

"I listened, but no sound reached me, only presently, some seconds
afterwards, the dog again pricked his ears as though _he_ heard
something. That settled me, and I mounted and rode forward through the
night toward the place where I thought I had seen the flash. For two
hours I rode, firing my revolver from time to time; then as no answer
came, gave it up as a bad job, and stopped. But Pharaoh there wouldn't
stop. He began to whine and sniff and run forward, and at last bolted
into the darkness, out of which presently I heard him barking some
hundreds of yards away, to call me, I suppose. So I followed and found
you three gentlemen, dead, as I thought at first. That's all the story,
Captain."

"One with a good end, anyway, Sergeant. We owe our lives to you."

"Beg your pardon, Captain," answered Quick modestly; "not to me at all,
but to Providence first that arranged everything, before we were born
perhaps, and next to Pharaoh. He's a wise dog, Pharaoh, though fierce
with some, and you did a good deal when you bought him for a bottle of
whisky and a sixpenny pocket-knife."