all dried to a uniform ochre. But if you had stood on the rise where the
stage stopped and faced toward the west, you would have seen, stretching
to the horizon, a green expanse that told of water.

This was the tules, a vast spread of marsh covered with bulrushes, flat
as a floor, and extending from a distant arm of the bay back into the
land. It was like a wedge of green thrust through the yellow, splitting
it apart, at one end meeting the sky in a level line, at the other
narrowing to a point which penetrated the bases of the hills. From these
streams wound down ravine and rift till their currents slipped into the
brackish waters of the marsh. Such a stream, dried now to a few stagnant
pools, had worn a way along the gulley where the holdup had occurred.

Down this gulley, the box between them, the bandits ran. Alders and bay
grew thick, sun spots glancing through their leaves, boughs slapping and
slashing back from the passage of the rushing bodies, stones rolling
under the flying feet. The heat was suffocating, the narrow cleft holding
it, the matted foliage keeping out all air. The men's faces were
empurpled, the gunny sacks about their necks were soaked with sweat. They
spoke little--a grunt, a muttered oath as a stone turned. Doubled under
the branches, crashing through a covert with closed eyes and warding arm,
they fled, now and then pausing for a quick change of hands on the box or
the sweep of a sleeve across a dripping brow. Nearly a half hour from the
time they had started they emerged into brighter light, the trees growing
sparse, the earth moist, a soft coolness rising--the creek's conjunction
with the tules.

The sun was sloping westward, the sky infinitely blue and clear, golden
light slanting across the plain's distant edges. Before them, silent, not
a breath stirring the close-packed growth, stretched the marshes. They