Daylight followed swiftly. From a dull lead color the sky immediately above the ridge, which stretched away interminably north and south, gave way to a pink indescribably rich and delicate. Steadily this pink crept over the heavens, rolling up like the gradual unfolding of a giant canvas, dragging along in its wake hues verging toward golden yellow, until the whole eastern sky, aflame with the light of approaching day, was a conflagration of pinks and yellows in all their manifold mixtures, promising, but not yet realizing, a warmth which would dispel the spring chill left by the long night. Then, with the whole east blazing with molten gold, there came the feeling of actual warmth, and with it the full radiance of day--bringing out in minute detail rock and arroyo and verdant growth, and an expanse of desert unbroken by the least vestige of animal life. At this absence of all that which would suggest the presence of life--adobes, corrals, windmills--Pat awoke again to vague uneasiness and fell to pondering his future under these men, whom he now instinctively knew pursued ways outside the bounds of the civilization of his past. A voice behind, presumably that of the little man, interrupted the protracted silence. It was high-pitched. "How's that hoss a-holdin', Jim?" Pat felt a slight twitch on the reins. Evidently the man had been in deep thought, out of which the voice had startled him. Directly he made answer. "I got quality here, Glover--I guess. Can't never tell, though. He's a good horse, but he mayn't pan out good for me." There was further silence. "Johnson," went on the high-pitched voice again, after a time, "did ye git what Zeke said about the country down there?" But the leader seemed not to hear. Straight as an arrow, bulking large upon a little gray mare, he moved not the fraction of an inch with the question. Whereupon the little man, after muttering something further about Zeke, relapsed into silence. Suddenly Pat stumbled and fell to his knees. He quickly regained his feet, however, and resumed the steady forward grind. And grind it now was becoming. His legs burned with a strange distress, his eyes ached from loss of sleep. Throughout his body was a weariness new to him. He was not accustomed to this ceaseless fox-trotting. He could not recall the time when, even on their longest excursion, his mistress had forced him like this. She had always considered him to the extent of granting him many blissful periods of rest. He found himself wanting some such consideration now. He felt that he would like to drop into a walk or to burst into a canter, knowing the relief to be found in any change of gait. But this was denied him. Yet, since the other horses gave no sign of weariness, each appearing possessed of endurance greater than his own, he refrained, through a pride greater even than his distress, from making of his own accord any change in his gait.