The figures of the two men were hardly discernible, and the
girl started nervously as her horse splashed into the water of the
creek that foamed noisily over the canyon floor. She shivered slightly
in the wind that sucked chill through the winding passage, although
back there in the moonlight the night had been still. Gradually the
canyon widened. Its walls grew lower and slanted from the
perpendicular. Moonlight illumined the wider bends and flashed in
silver scintillations from the broken waters of the creek. The click
of the horses' feet again gave place to the softer trampling of mud,
and the valley once more spread before them, broader now, and flanked
by an endless succession of foothills.
Bat appeared mysteriously from nowhere, and after a whispered colloquy
with Tex, led off toward the west, leaving the valley behind and
winding into the maze of foothills. A few miles farther on they came
again into the valley and Alice saw that the creek had dwindled into a
succession of shallow pools between which flowed a tiny trickle of the
water. On and on they rode, following the shallow valley. Lush grass
overran the pools and clogged the feeble trickle of the creek. Farther
on, even the green patches disappeared and white alkali soil showed
between the gnarled sage bushes.
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