A narrow pathway leads from the mesa down the canon's wall, twisting and doubling on itself to Apache Spring. The trail then moves southward between towering cliffs, a lane through which is caught a far-distant glimpse of the mountains. Little whirlwinds of dust spring up, ever and anon, twirling wildly across the sandy wastes. The air suffocates, like the breath of a furnace. Ever the pitiless sun searches and scorches, as conscience sears and stings a stricken soul. Down the narrow trail, past the spring, ride in single file the Apaches, slowly, on tired horses, for the pursuing soldiers have given them no halting space. Naked, save for a breech-clout, with a narrow red band of dyed buckskin about his forehead, in which sticks a feather, each rides silent, grim, cruel, a hideous human reptile, as native to the desert as is the Gila monster. The horse is saddleless. For a bridle, the warrior uses a piece of grass rope twisted about the pony's lower jaw. His legs droop laxly by the horse's sides. In his right hand he grasps his rifle, resting the butt on the knee. The only sound to break the stillness of the day is the rattle of stones, slipping and sliding down the pathway when loosened by hoofs of the ponies. Creeping down the canon wall, they cross the bottom, pass the spring, and disappear at a turn in the canon walls. Nature and Indian meet and merge in a world of torture and despair. Dick had fared badly in the Lava Beds. One spring after the other he found dry. His horse fell from exhaustion and thirst; he ended the sufferings of his pack-mule with a revolver-bullet. Dick staggered on afoot across the desert, hoping to find water at Apache Spring. His blue shirt was torn and faded to a dingy purple. Hat and shoulders were gray with alkali dust. Contact with the rocks and cactus had rent trousers and leggings. His shoes, cut by sharply pointed stones, and with thread rotted by the dust of the deserts, were worn to shreds. Unshaven and unshorn, with sunken cheeks and eyes bright with the delirium of thirst, he dragged his weary way across the desert. He reached Apache Spring shortly after the passage of the Indians, but craving for water was so great that he did not observe their trail. Reeling toward the spring, he cast aside his hat and flung down his rifle in his eagerness to drink. Throwing himself on his face before the hollow in the rock from which the water trickled, he first saw that the waters had dried up. With his bony fingers he dug into the dry sand, crying aloud in despair. Stiffly he arose and blundered blindly to a rock, upon which he sank in his weakness. "Another day like this and I'll give up the fight," he moaned. "Apache Spring dry--the first time in years; Little Squaw Spring, nothing but dust and alkali; it is twenty miles to Clearwater Spring--twenty miles--if I can make it."