Even the lakes were dry. When we met with the term “dry lake” in the guide book, we set it down as another flight of the fanciful creature who had composed its pages, but soon we came upon it. Four miles and more we drove over the bottom of a lake now not even damp, making deep tracks in the white sand. Dry rivers were later to become commonplace, but we were children of Israel but this once. Suddenly beyond us in the distance, through a heat where no drop of water could live, we saw a sparkle and a shimmer of cool blue, and cottonwoods reflected in wet, wavering lines. Our dry lake had turned wet! Mountain peaks rose and floated on its surface,--and not till they melted and skipped about could I believe Toby’s assertion that we were gazing on a mirage. When she focused her camera upon the mirage I scoffed loudly. Tales of travelers in the desert had early rooted in my none too scientific mind the idea that a mirage is a subconscious desire visually projected, like the rootless vines which climb the air at the command of Hindu fakirs. When our finished print showed a definite, if faint, outline of non-existent hills, my little world was slightly less shaken than if Toby had produced a photograph of an astral wanderer from the spirit world. I do not like to look at it. It seems like black magic. The desert, bleached dazzling white under an afternoon sun, seemed shorn of all the mysteries and apprehensions with which the previous night and Mrs. Flanagan had enveloped it. Now it lay stark and unromantic, colorless in a blare of heat. We were only a few miles from Tucson, when we mounted a hill, and poised a second, looking down on a horseshoe canyon. Our road, narrow and stony, threaded the edge of it,--a sharp down grade, a quick curve at the base, and a steady climb up. As we turned the brow of the hill and passed a clump of trees hiding the view of the bottom, ahead, directly across the road and blocking all passage stood a car. I put on the brakes sharply, and our car veered toward the edge and wavered. How stupid to leave a car directly across a dangerous road on a down grade! This was my first reaction. Then we saw two men, with the slouch that marks the Westerner, step from behind their car, and await our approach. Even while I concentrated on avoiding turning into the ditch, their very quiet manner as they awaited us arrested attention. It was not stupidity which made them choose to alight at that spot. It was an ideally clever place for a hold-up! Concealed itself, it commanded a view of the entire canyon, and would catch a car coming from either direction at lowered speed. These men were not waiting our approach for any casual purpose; something too guarded and watchful, too tensely alert, lay taut beneath their easy slouch. The elder, a bearded thick-set man, carelessly held his hand on his hip pocket, as they do in all Western novels. The taller and younger man stepped into the middle of the road, and raised a hand to stop us.