So this was his single purpose--possession of the girl would be a mere by-product--when he used his power with the police arm of the Sonora state government to assemble ten ruffians of the rurales force at a point on the railroad within striking distance of the Road of the Dead Men. Desert cars were at his disposal but he preferred to head a mounted force because his plans looked to an excursion into country where autos could not go, once Hickman was his prisoner. A complaisant spirit of justice at Hermosillo would accept in lieu of the escaped convict’s person some token symbolical of a justice already wrought through the instrument of the state’s worthy servant, Urgo. The day after the sand storm Urgo and his rurales set out from the railroad for the west and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a long road. They were superbly mounted; two pack animals trotted behind the file of horsemen. Revolutions had been squelched by a less imposing force. After the cleansing storm the desert was bland and tolerant. Air clear as quartz, sun tempered by fresh winds from the west, on every club and spike of cactus fresh flowers born overnight to replace those destroyed by the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung a guitar from a mule’s pack and strummed minor chords to the accompaniment of a song in which the rest joined. The ballad was gentle as a butterfly’s wing, telling of roses over a lady-love’s window. Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert peace, perhaps even by the tenderness of the song his murderers sang, pleasured himself by building pictures in prospect. He saw himself riding alone up to the door of the Casa O’Donoju--the rurales would be disposed beyond sight of the door but within call; saw the courteous bow he would make to Señorita Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite phrase concerning her health and that of her respected father. Ah, Don Padraic dead--murdered! Grace of God, but that was sad news. But the American gentleman who was a guest at the Casa O’Donoju; did his unfortunate wound still keep him under the beneficence of the casa’s hospitality--? Five hours of the second day out on the Road of the Dead Men the rurale who was riding at the head of the file reined in with a shout. His arm stretched to point a tiny black beetle away off to the westward: a beetle skittering down the long slope of a divide and in their direction. In ten minutes the beetle showed again, but it had grown to the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them almost before the horsemen had spread themselves in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom Urgo instantly recognized, accepted the implied hint to halt; in the seat beside him was a strange white man--a gringo by his looks. This man let a bland, incurious eye range over the band of horsemen until it settled upon Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate stare somehow affronting to the Spaniard’s dignity.