dismount. He lifted the right forefoot, the one the horse had favored,
and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out

with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and
presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's

heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It
was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl,

and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it was a silence of death.
Hare took care not to fall behind Wolf again, he had no wish to hear that

cry repeated. The dog moved onward with silent feet; the horse wound
after him with hoofs padded in the sand; the moon lifted and the desert

gleamed; the bowlders grew larger and the lanes wider. So the night wore
on, and Hare's eyelids grew heavy, and his whole weary body cried out for

rest and forgetfulness. He nodded until he swayed in the saddle; then
righted himself, only to doze again The east gave birth to the morning

star. The whitening sky was the harbinger of day. Hare could not bring
himself to face the light and heat, and he stopped at a wind-worn cave

under a shelving rock. He was asleep when he rolled out on the
sand-strewn floor. Once he awoke and it was still day, for his eyes

quickly shut upon the glare. He lay sweltering till once more slumber
claimed him.The dog awakened him, with cold nose and low whine. Another

twilight had fallen. Hare crawled out, stiff and sore, hungry and
parching with thirst. He made an attempt to eat, but it was a failure.

There was a dry burning in his throat, a dizzy feeling in his brain, and
there were red flashes before his eyes. Wolf refused meat, and Silver-

mane turned from the grain, and lowered his head to munch a few blades of
desert grass.

Then the journey began, and the night fell black. A cool wind blew from
the west, the white stars blinked, the weird moon rose with its ghastly

glow. Huge bowlders rose before him in grotesque shapes, tombs and
pillars and statues of Nature's dead, carved by wind and sand. But some

had life in Hare's disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him,
and stalked abroad and peered at him with deep-set eyes.

Hare fought with all his force against this mood of gloom. Waif eras not
a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; and he would find

water, and that meant life. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would travel to
the furthermost corner of this hell of sand-swept stone. Hare tried to

collect all his spirit, all his energies, but the battle seemed to be
going against him. All about him was silence, breathless silence,

insupportable silence of ages. Desert spectres danced in the darkness.
The worn-out moon gleamed golden over the worn-out waste. Desolation

lurked under the sable shadows.
Hare rode on into the night, tumbled from his saddle in the gray of dawn

to sleep, and stumbled in the twilight to his drooping horse. His eyes
were blind now to the desert shapes, his brain burned and his tongue

filled his mouth.Silvermane trod ever upon Wolf's heels; he had come into
the kingdom of his desert-strength; he lifted his drooping head and

lengthened his stride; weariness had gone and he snorted his welcome to
something on the wind. Then he passed the limping dog and led the way.

Hare held to the pommel and bent dizzily forward in the saddle.
Silvermane was going down, step by step, with metallic clicks upon flinty

rock. Whether he went down or up was all the same to Hare; he held on
with closed eyes and whispered to himself. Down and down, step by step,

cracking the stones with iron-shod hoofs, the gray stallion worked his
perilous way, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep. Then he stopped with a

great slow heave and bent his head.
The black bulge of a canyon rim blurred in Hare's hot eyes. A trickling

sound penetrated his tired brain. His ears had grown like his eyes--
false. Only another delusion! As he had been tortured with the sight of

lake and stream now he was to be tortured with the sound of running
water. Yet he listened, for it was sweet even in its mockery. What a

clear musicaltinkle, like silver bells tossing on the wind! He listened.
Soft murmuring flow, babble and gurgle, little hollow fall and splash!

Suddenly Silvermane, lifting his head, broke the silence of the canyon
with a great sigh of content. It pierced the dull fantasy of Hare's

mind; it burst the gloomy spell. The sigh and the snort which followed
were Silvermane's triumphant signals when he had drunk his fill.

Hare fell from the saddle. The gray dog lay stretched low in the
darkness. Hare crawled beside him and reached out with his hot hands.

Smooth cool marble rock, growing slippery, then wet, led into running
water. He slid forward on his face and wonderful cold thrills quivered

over his burning skin. He drank and drank until he could drink no more.
Then he lay back upon the rock; the madness of his brain went out with

the light of the stars, and he slept.
When he awoke red canyon walls leaned far above him to a gap spanned by

blue sky. A song of rushing water murmured near his ears. He looked
down; a spring gushed from a crack in the wall; Silvermane cropped green

bushes, and Wolf sat on his haunches waiting, but no longer with sad eyes
and strange mien. Hare raised himself, looking again and again, and

slowly gathered his wits. The crimson blur had gone from his eyes and
the burning from his skin, and the painful swelling from his tongue.

He drank long and deeply, and rising with clearing thoughts and thankful
heart, he kissed Wolf's white head, and laid his arms round Silvermane's

neck. He fed them, and ate himself, not without difficulty, for his lips
were puffed and his tongue felt like a piece of rope. When he had eaten,

his strength came back.
At a word Wolf, with a wag of his tail, splashed into the gravelly stream

bed. Hare followed on foot, leading Silvermane. There were little beds
of pebbles and beaches of sand and short steps down which the water

babbled. The canyon was narrow and tortuous; Hare could not see ahead or
below, for the projecting red cliffs, growing higher as he descended,

walled out the view. The blue stream of sky above grew bluer and the
light and shade less bright. For an hour he went down steadily without a

check, and the farther down the rougher grew the way. Bowlders wedged in
narrow places made foaming waterfalls. Silvermane clicked down

confidently.
The slenderstream of water, swelled by seeping springs and little rills,

gained the dignity of a brook; it began to dash merrily and hurriedly
downward. The depth of the falls, the height of cliffs, and the size of

the bowlders increased in the descent. Wolf splashed on unmindful; there
was a new spirit in his movements; and when he looked back for his

laboring companions there was friendly protest in his eyes. Silvermane's
mien plainly showed that where a dog could go he could follow.

Silvermane's blood was heated; the desert was an old story to him; it had
only tired him and parched his throat; this canyon of downward steps and

falls, with ever-deepening drops, was new to him, and roused his mettle;
and from his long training in the wilds he had gained a marvellous

sure-footedness.
The canyon narrowed as it deepened; the jutting walls leaned together,

shutting out the light; the sky above was now a ribbon of blue, only to
be seen when Hare threw back his head and stared straight up.

"It'll be easier climbing up, Silvermane," he panted--"if we ever get
the chance."

The sand and gravel and shale had disappeared; all was bare clean-washed
rock. In many places the brook failed as a trail, for it leaped down in

white sheets over mossy cliffs. Hare faced these walls in despair. But
Wolf led on over the ledges and Silvermane followed, nothing daunted. At

last Hare shrank back from a hole which defied him utterly. Even Wolf
hesitated. The canyon was barely twenty feet wide; the floor ended in a

precipice; the stream leaped out and fell into a dark cleft from which no
sound arose. On the right there was a shelf of rock; it was scarce half

a foot broad at the narrowest and then apparently vanished altogether.
Hare stared helplessly up at the slanting shut-in walls.

While he hesitated Wolf pattered out upon the ledge and Silvermane
stamped restlessly. With a desperate fear of losing his beloved horse

Hare let go the bridle and stepped upon the ledge. He walked rapidly,
for a slow step meant uncertainty and a false one meant death. He heard

the sharp ring of Silvermane's shoes, and he listened in agonized
suspense for the slip, the snort, the crash that he feared must come.

But it did not come. Seeing nothing except the narrow ledge, yet feeling
the blue abyss beneath him, he bent all his mind to his task, and finally