Adam waited. All at once his whole body vibrated with the leap of his heart. A tall, hulking man hove in sight, balancing a bar across his shoulders, from each end of which hung a large bucket. These buckets swung to and fro with the fellow’s steps. Like a lazy man, he advanced leisurely. Adam saw a little puff of smoke lift from the red, indistinct patch that was this water carrier’s face. He had cigarette or pipe. As he approached nearer and nearer, Adam received steadily growing and changing impressions of the man he was about to kill, until they fixed in the image of a long, loosely jointed body, a soiled shirt open at the neck, bare brown arms, and cruel red face. Just outside the mesquites, the robber halted to peer at the spot where the Indian had fallen, and then ahead as if he expected to see a body lying in the trail. “Ho! Ho! if thet durned Injin I beat didn’t crawl way down hyar! An’ his brains oozin’ out!” he ejaculated hoarsely, as he strode between the scratching mesquites, swinging the crossbar and buckets sidewise. “Takes a hell of a lot to kill some critters!” Like a released spring Adam shot up. His big hands flashed to cut off a startled yell. “Not so much!” he called, grimly, and next instant his giant frame strung to the expenditure of mighty effort. * * * * * At noon the wind was blowing a gusty gale and the sun shone a deep, weird, magenta color through the pall of yellow dust. The sky was not visible. Down on the ridges and in the washes dust sheets were whipped up at intervals. Clouds of flying sand rustled through the air, and sometimes the wind had force enough to carry grains of gravel. These intermittent blasts resembled the midnight furnace winds, except for the strange fact that they were not so hot, so withering. Every few minutes the canyon would be obscured in sweeping, curling streaks and sheets of dust. Then, as the gale roared away, the dust settled and the air again cleared. But high up, the dull, yellow pall hung, apparently motionless, with that weird sun, like a red-orange moon seen through haze, growing darker. The fury of the elements seemed to favor Adam. Heat and gale and obscurity could tend only to relax the vigilance of men. Adam counted upon surprising the gang. To his regret, he had found no weapon on the robber he had overcome. Wearing the man’s slouch sombrero pulled down, and carrying the water buckets suspended from the bar across his shoulders, Adam believed that in the thick of the duststorm he might approach near the gang, perhaps get right among them. When he got to the top of the amphitheater and found it a weird and terrible abyss of flying yellow shadows and full of shriek of wind and moan and roar, he decided he would go down as far as might seem advisable, then try to slip up on the robbers, wherever they were, and get a look at them and their surroundings before rushing to the attack.