"I utterly despise a man that gets drunk!" The words came with an angry vehemence, and for many minutes the Texan rode in silence while the bit chains clinked and the horses' hoofs thudded the ground dully. He leaned forward and his gloved hand gently smoothed his horse's mane. "You don't mean just exactly that," he said, with his eyes on the dim outline of a butte that rose high in the distance. Alice noticed that the bantering tone was gone from his voice, and that his words fell with a peculiar softness. "I reckon, though, I know what you do mean. An' I reckon that barrin' some little difference in viewpoint, we think about alike. . . . Yonder's Antelope Butte. We'll be safe to camp there till we find out which way the wind blows before we strike across." Deeper and deeper they pushed into the bad lands, the huge bulk of Antelope Butte looming always before them, its outline showing distinctly in the light of the sinking moon. As far as the eye could see on every side the moonlight revealed only black lava-rock, deep black shadows that marked the courses of dry coulees, and enormous mud-cracks--and Antelope Butte. As the girl rode beside the cowboy she noticed that the cynical smile was gone from the clean-cut profile. For miles he did not speak. Antelope Butte was near, now. "I am thirsty," she said. A gauntleted hand fumbled for a moment with the slicker behind the cantle, and extended a flask. "It's water. I figured someone would get thirsty." The girl drank from the flask and returned it: "If there are posses out won't they watch the water-holes? You said there are only a few in the bad lands." "Yes, they'll watch the water-holes. That's why we're goin' to camp on Antelope Butte--right up on top of it." "But, how will we get water?" "It's there." "Have you been up there?" The girl glanced upward. They were already ascending the first slope, and the huge mass of the detached mountain towered above them in a series of unscaleable precipices. "No. But the water's there. The top of the Butte hollows out like a saucer, an' in the bowl there's a little sunk spring. No one much ever goes up there. There's a little scragglin' timber, an' the trail--it's an old game trail--is hard to find if you don't know where to look for it. A horse-thief told me about it." "A horse-thief! Surely, you are not risking all our lives on the word of a horse-thief!" "Yes. He was a pretty good fellow. They killed him, afterwards, over near the Mission. He was runnin' off a bunch of Flourey horses." "But a man who would steal would lie!"