Then, it came again, the touch, the consciousness, the will to power, to do, to fight and overcome. He rose and looked across the Desert. A puff of dust, a swirl and eddy of riders, resolved itself through the terra cotta mist to the forms of three men going over the crest of the sand roll against the red sun-wrack of the sky line; three figures far apart, riding slowly, crawling against the face of the distant sky; one man in advance bent over his pummel; a second rider with a pack horse in tow pulling and dragging on the halter rope, the pack horse white and lame, stopping at every step, the man crunched, huddling fore done, down in his saddle; then dragging far to the rear, just cresting the sky line as the other two disappeared, swaying from side to side, a ragged wreck lying almost forward on his horse's neck; was he being deserted? Wayland uttered a jubilant low whistle and tumbled down the sand bank to his camp kit. The wind was at lull and the velvet air palpitating as a human pulse. The after-glow lay on the orange sands cresting all the ridges with cressets of flame. Wayland was riding bare backed. "When we sight them, I want you to drop back, sir! The Desert's got them. They haven't the resistance of dead fish left. If we cut across this sink, as I make it, we'll save a couple of miles and almost meet them on the other side of the next ridge." When Wayland had wakened the old frontiersman, he had babbled inconsequently about the sea. Mixing brandy with the last of the sediment water, Wayland got him into the saddle. There were queer splotches of blood under the skin on the backs of his hands; but when the brandy relieved his fatigue, he stopped babbling of the sea and spoke coherently. "Y' mind the man, whose wife died in the Desert, Wayland?" His horse stumbled. The Ranger snatched at the bridle and jerked it up. "Yes," said Wayland. "Vera noble of the woman; 'tis all right on _her_ record, Wayland; but what do y' think o' th' man?" "But in this case, the man took her in to save her life." "A wasn't thinking of _his_ case," answered the other bluntly. "A was thinking of _yours_." The horse stumbled again. This time, the Ranger kept hold of the bridle rein.