insistent grip on his shoulder aroused him. But the overhead sun,
whose direct rays were fairly boiling the sweat out of him, harshly
corrected this impression.

"I've found their boat," said Captain Funcke. "The trail heads for
the Pintos. They're traveling heavy. I don't believe they're
twenty-four hours ahead of us."

Average Jones stumbled to his feet. "I'm ready," he said.

"It's a case of travel light." The hunter handed over a small bag of
food and a large canteen full of water. He himself packed a much
larger load, including two canteens and a powerful field-glass.
Taking a shotgun from the boat, he shouldered it, and set out at a
long, easy stride.

To Average Jones the memory of that day has never been wholly clear.
Sodden with weariness, dazzled and muddled by the savage sun-glare,
he followed, with eyes fixed, the rhythmically, monotonously moving
feet of his leader, through an interminable desert of soft, clogging
sand; a desert which dropped away into parched arroyos, and rose to
scorched mesas whereon fierce cacti thrust at him with thorns and
spikes; a desert dead and mummified in the dreadful heat; a lifeless
Inferno wherein moved neither beast, bird nor insect. He remembers,
dimly, lying as he fell, when the indefatigable captain called a
halt, and being wakened in the chill breeze of evening, to see a
wall of mountains blocking the advance. Food brought him to his
normal self again, and in the crisp air of night he set his face to
the task of climbing. Severe as this was upon his unaccustomed
muscles, the firm rocks were still a welcome relief after the