When the sun had gone down behind their mountain, and a welcome coolness had settled itself over the burning ground, they went to sit by the spring that bubbled out of the hillside. All through the twilight they sat without speaking, their thoughts far away. Then darkness came and hid the barren hills, mercifully shutting from their sight the pitiful poverty of the life that was now theirs. A soft west wind sprung up; and the balmy night air, cool and dry, seemed to have driven away much of the illness the boy had felt through the day. They sat in a silence unbroken only by the crickets’ perpetual shrilling, the hoot of a ground owl, and a coyote yelping to its mate across the cañon. When the first prolonged cry pierced the air, the slight form had nestled instinctively closer to Austin. Then the mournful wail of the little gray ghost of the plains grew fainter and fainter, and finally ceased altogether, as he trotted away over the ridge, in quest of a freshly-skinned carcass where some unfortunate horse had fallen a victim to the sure aim of some horse hunter. They sat for nearly an hour in the silence of night in the mountains, Austin wondering if the time would ever come when the “little one” would guess how miserably tired of it he had become in less than a year. He hoped--prayed, the other would never know. And (worse still) would a sickening disgust ever find its way into that other heart, as it had into his own? With all his soul he silently prayed it might never be so. “Come, little one,” he said, gently, “we must go in. It is late.” The other made no response. “Don’t you want to go yet? Are you not sleepy--and a little bit tired, poor child?” Still no answer, though Austin knew he was heard. He waited. Then---- “Harvey,”--the voice was almost a whisper--“we have seen some happy days--sometimes--and you have always been good to me; but, do you---- I mean, when you remember what we have lost, and what we are and must always remain, do you find in this life we are living, compensation enough for all that we suffer? Do you? Tell me!” So! it had come to the other one, too. * * * * * A day of fast, hard riding had drawn to its close. Reddy and Dick, and their “pardners,” and Black Joaquin and his brother, together with two or three others had made their first day’s run of wild mustangs. Three or four “bunches” of native wild horses had been surrounded and driven with a rush, in a whirl of alkali dust, into a juniper corral far down in the cañon. Then the circling riatas had brought them--bucking and kicking--down to the earth; and biting and striking at their captors, they fought for their liberty till exhausted and dripping with sweat--their heads and knees skinned and mouths bleeding--they found themselves conquered, necked to gentler horses, or else hoppled.