burro did not appear to be moving about. The quiet split to the
cry of a coyote. It rose strange, wild, mournful--not the howl
of a prowling upland beast baying the campfire or barking at a
lonely prospector, but the wail of a wolf, full-voiced, crying out
the meaning of the desert and the night. Hunger throbbed in
it--hunger for a mate, for offspring, for life. When it ceased,
the terrible desert silence smote Cameron, and the cry echoed in his soul.
He and that wandering wolf were brothers.

Then a sharp clink of metal on stone and soft pads of hoofs in sand
prompted Cameron to reach for his gun, and to move out of the light
of the waning campfire. He was somewhere along the wild border line
between Sonora and Arizona; and the prospector who dared the heat and
barrenness of that region risked other dangers sometimes as menacing.

Figures darker than the gloom approached and took shape, and in
the light turned out to be those of a white man and a heavily
packed burro.

"Hello there," the man called, as he came to a halt and gazed
about him. "I saw your fire. May I make camp here?"

Cameron came forth out of the shadow and greeted his visitor, whom
he took for a prospector like himself. Cameron resented the breaking
of his lonely campfire vigil, but he respected the law of the desert.

The stranger thanked him, and then slipped the pack from his burro.
Then he rolled out his pack and began preparations for a meal. His
movements were slow and methodical.