They topped the next rise. It was decidedly a rise and commanded a wide view of the flat part of the country. At a little distance rose a live oak whose low branches offered a slight shelter from the sun. A cooling breeze played about them, kicking up spirals of sand, and a prairie-dog village manifested eager interest in their presence. They ate their sandwiches and Hard returned to the subject of Scott and Polly. "Do you think--you being a woman and acute in such matters--that he's asked her yet?" he said. "No, I don't; they both look too edgy. He's going to, however, and she's going to take him, I think. I'm not sure. She may be flirting." "If she flirts with Scott, I'll have her punished," declared Hard, indignantly. "Well, maybe she won't. She's a bit of a minx, though, and while she's young she's no infant. Some girls have to do the world's flirting, Henry, because the others won't--or can't. It wouldn't do to have things made too easy for you." "They are not," said Hard, with meaning. "Well, this isn't getting to Soria's." Clara rose hastily. She looked back over the road. "It looks like people back there--dust flying. Do you suppose it's more troops?" Hard stared. "No," he said, finally, "it's only the wind." "Yes, I guess it is," assented Clara. "Let's be moving." It was slow going--a lame man and a tired woman--both unused to walking even under favorable circumstances. It seemed to Clara Conrad as she looked ahead at the wearisome stretch of road, as though they made no more progress than a couple of ants crawling up a mountainside. "Do you think we'll ever make it?" she said, stopping for a long breath at the top of a small rise. "We've got to," said Hard, simply, "What else is there to do?" Clara did not answer but looked longingly back toward the spot in the cottonwoods. "Don't play Lot's wife, Clara; keep on looking forward. It's our only hope." "Lot's wife always appealed to my sympathies," said Clara, pensively. "I think she was probably a settled sort of a woman, married to one of these men who like change. It must have irritated her awfully to have to pack up and move when she was so comfortable. Oh, Henry, that's not wind blowing the dust! It's men--horsemen!" "It does look like it." "They're coming this way. I don't like it." "Neither do I." Hard's voice was anxious. "If we had a bit of shelter----" They looked anxiously about, but the flatness of the country offered no opportunity for anything larger than a gopher to hide. Trees and bushes, alike too small for shelter, and little rises of land, hard enough to climb but easily visible to anyone on horseback, were all that offered themselves. In the distance an arroyo looked promising, but it was far and the line of riders very near. "We've got to make a break for it, anyhow," said Hard, at last. "It's off the road. It's our only chance; that, and the possibility that they may be troops and in too much of a hurry to stop for the likes of us. Come on."