Fortunately for Ramsay, the old desert rat was used to the slow burro pace, and shuffled along at a steady plodding gait which was not difficult to sustain, and which ate up the distance slowly but surely. To anyone not used to it, there was something terrible in the thought of thus shuffling across the desert day in and day out for years, eternally seeking the yellow dust; and yet men did it, hundreds of them, and were not happy unless doing it. Pat Ramsay faced the project which lay ahead of them, unblinking the facts, and not shirking what was to be done. He now knew what before he had only conjectured. Impossible as it seemed, he knew it to be true. Here at this back door of civilization existed a number of men whose business in life was robbery and if necessary murder—an abnormal situation, to be handled with other than normal methods. Ramsay was no innocent in the waste places. He knew that in these vast stretches of desert country there existed strange things, that in this apparently empty basin of forgotten seas there were still unsolved problems and undiscovered wonders. If he was to go seeking the men who had murdered his brother, he must put away all thought of haling them before the bar of justice; the only justice which obtained in the desert was that of the strong hand and the inexorable requisitions of nature. If men offended the laws of nature, a terrible punishment was exacted from them. If they offended the laws of man, as they did every day, the ordinary machinery of man’s justice could not always reach them—and they knew it. “By gosh,” said Sagebrush, when they halted at noon in the shade of a towering pinnacle of rock, “ye done a good stroke when ye got to work this mornin’ and cut off Sidewinder from them fellers yonder! Yessir! I’d think twicet or maybe three times ’fore I tackled that there gent. Most likely that cholo and Mesquite rode in to git supplies, and cuttin’ them off was a right smart piece o’ work. Wisht we had a hoss apiece! Sing out next you see a nice fat chuckwalla. I’d like to git me a good chunk o’ lizard-tail for supper, Per-fesser.” Before they had left the overhanging rock, indeed, Sagebrush located a fine big lizard and staged a battle royal. The lizard, ensconced in a rock cranny, inflated himself and could not be dislodged for all the tugging of Sagebrush, who in the end was content with taking the tail. This the chuckwalla gladly surrendered, and Sagebrush stowed it away in his pocket after Ramsay refused to share the delicacy. The afternoon drew on. They did not hurry; yet the ground was covered steadily, and no moving object broke the dun expanse of glaring rock and sand. Gradually they approached a patch of green high on the hills, which served as landmark, but the entrance to Hourglass Cañon itself did not open up before them. When the sun was drawing down to the western horizon, Sagebrush halted.