point. Here the long ridge of the mountain ran between the two humps, only a few yards in width, clothed over with a dense growth of sage and dwarfed laurel, the cedar-green of rank greasewood clumped here and there, every plume of it primed with its inflammable oils, waiting to vanish in a whistling roar at the first touch of flame. Juan pushed across the ridge, thinking to ride down out of that withering blast of fire, knowing that it could not run down this lee side as rapidly as it had pursued him upward on the slope at his back.
His hope was cut off by a drop almost perpendicular. Not a ledge, but a brush-grown steep, so tangled with interlacing growth that a stone scarcely could have rolled down, it appeared. Juan hastened on to the peak where he had seen the horse. The vaqueros would have gone at the first sight of fire; it was his hope that he might follow their trail to safety.
What had appeared a barren spot from the valley, here proved to be some sort of winter-growing plant that had matured and turned brown. It stood thick on the slope of the peak, kindling spread ready for the advancing fire. At the summit there was a small clear space, indeed, and here lay rocks red from the passing of old fires, which had streamed across them on such a wind as this. Here Juan paused a moment. The horse that he had seen must have been on this point; from here the trail that he must follow led away.
Juan could not discover any tracks from the
