"Hicks, I never supposed you were a fool. You know better than that, if you will only stop and think. This claim matter is settled already. The whole trouble originated with Farnham, and he is dead. Tomorrow you 'll bury him. The sheriff is here, and he's already beginning to understand this affair. He stands to help you. Now, all you 've got to do is to swear out warrants for Farnham's partners, and show up in evidence that tunnel running along your lead. It's simple as A B C, now that you know it's there. They can't beat you, and you don't require a word of testimony from me. But that poor girl needs me,--she's almost crazed by this thing,--and I 'm going with her, if I have to fight my way out from here with a rifle. That's the whole of it--either you give me those horses, or I 'll take them." Old Hicks looked into the grim face fronting him so threateningly, the complete situation slowly revealing itself to his mind. "Great Guns!" he said at last, almost apologetically. "Yer need n't do nothin' like that. Lord, no! I like yer first rate, an' I like the girl. Yer bet I do, an' I 'm damn glad that Farnham 's knocked out. Shore, I 'll help the both o' yer. I reckon Stutter 'd be no good as a guide ter-night, but I kin show yer the way down the ravine. The rest is just ridin'. Yer kin leave them hosses with the section-boss at Daggett till I come fer 'em." CHAPTER XXVIII ACROSS THE DESERT TO THE END Never in the after years could Winston clearly recall the incidents of that night's ride across the sand waste. The haze which shrouded his brain would never wholly lift. Except for a few detached details the surroundings of that journey remained vague, clouded, indistinct. He remembered the great, burning desert; the stars gleaming down above them like many eyes; the ponderous, ragged edge of cloud in the west; the irregular, castellated range of hills at their back; the dull expanse of plain ever stretching away in front, with no boundary other than that southern sky. The weird, ghostly shadows of cactus and Spanish bayonet were everywhere; strange, eerie noises were borne to them out of the void--the distant cries of prowling wolves, the mournful sough of the night wind, the lonely hoot of some far-off owl. Nothing greeted the roving eyes but desolation,--a desolation utter and complete, a mere waste of tumbled sand, by daylight whitened here and there by irregular patches of alkali, but under the brooding night shadows lying brown, dull, forlorn beyond all expression, a trackless, deserted ocean of mystery, oppressive in its drear sombreness.