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drunk on the way out. The hottest, most aching part of the day remained. The desert sun and the alkali were drinking heavily from Bonnet’s body, till the extraction of water was a physical sensation. He looked at the empty canteen in his hand and then turned it up to examine it.
    It did not matter now, nothing mattered now, but there was a small hole made by the point of a knife in the canteen’s bottom from which the water had drip, drip, dripped, to evaporate before it ever struck the ground.
    Bonnet stared at Desperation Peak. Sven was already beginning to lumber back toward the first spur of the distant mountain. It was so deceptively near, the green meadows, the green trees, so cool and inviting. Sven stumbled on, faster now, floundering, blowing hard as he lumbered through the alkali, surging back in animal desperation for a life which his mind knew was already forfeited.
    Bonnet looked at the track which led out into the alkali wastes, fixed his spyglass to his eye. The hot metal of the rim burned him but he gazed thoughtfully. The track led on for another half a mile and then curved slowly to the right to head back toward Desperation Peak. It passed within five hundred yards of the outgoing trail, angling off and getting wider. Bonnet crossed the bow and found the returning spoor. He was reeling already from thirst.
    He went outward along it a little way, for there was no jenny here—only a man and a man walking light. This puzzled him and he thought perhaps he might find the gold. But ten minutes later he knew that even this satisfaction was to be denied him.
    Beside the trail, indifferently covered with alkali dust, were the two front legs of a mummified burro. They had been sawed off at the knees with a knife. There were also two tattered old boots with peculiar red tops. He recognized them instantly as belonging to the half-breed Cormoree, whom he had murdered.
    Bonnet smiled wanly as he looked at these “tracking irons.” “What a fool I am,” he thought to himself. One of these hoofs even had a nick in it, a flaw which, if his greed had not blinded him, would easily have disclosed that two hoofs, not four, had been used.
    He had been fooled; while they had searched in the wastes, the trap had been laid for them last night. The hunters had been trapped by the fox. The young miner would be back there lying beside a cool stream by now.
    Bonnet turned and looked back at Desperation Peak. The dust devils were gathering with the approaching noontide. The exhaustion of moisture from him was such as to make him faint. It was easily a hundred and forty degrees here, and death would not be too pleasant.
    Sven was merely a speck, stumbling more often now, picking himself up to rush on, a hopeless, degrading figure in the near distance. The major portion of his journey was yet to be traveled. He would obviously never make it.
    Bonnet breathed a contemptuous, “Animal.” He took out his Colt. The metal was hot to his touch. In a moment he would not mind that; he placed the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger.
    The shot ranged faintly across the alkali wasteland and was swallowed up in the sing of the whirling dust devils.
    In the distance, Sven turned, wiped a shaking hand across his cracked lips, and looked back. His small eyes picked out the huddled dot. He convulsively took two steps toward it before he understood. Sven staggered and then, face hidden in his hands, sank down hopelessly to wait.
    T im Beckdolt came back from the spur from which he had been watching. He walked wearily up the gully toward his placer, came to the spot where the water sank away. He bathed his face and went on. Just before dusk he arrived at his diggings. He sat down, tiredly.
    He emptied the remainder of the water from his canteens on the ground and put them aside to sweeten. Methodically he cut long strips from the haunch of venison which Sven had killed and left to hang on a pine tree. He restrained an impulse to devour it