Across Cactus and Lava

Yaqui appeared as he had vanished. He might have been part of the
shadows. But he was there. He started off down the trail leading
Diablo. Again the white line stretched slowly out. Gale fell in
behind. A bench of ground, covered with sparse greasewood, sloped
gently down to the deep, wide arroyo of Forlorn River. Blanco Sol shied
a few feet out of the trail. Peering low with keen eyes, Gale made out
three objects--a white sombrero, a blanket, and a Mexican lying face
down. The Yaqui had stolen upon this sentinel like a silent wind of
death. Just then a desert coyote wailed, and the wild cry fitted the
darkness and the Yaqui's deed.

Once under the dark lee of the river bank Yaqui caused another halt,
and he disappeared as before. It seemed to Gale that the Indian
started to cross the pale level sandbed of the river, where stones
stood out gray, and the darker line of opposite shore was visible. But
he vanished, and it was impossible to tell whether he went one way or
another. Moments passed. The horses held heads up, looked toward the
glimmering campfires and listened. Gale thrilled with the meaning of it
all--the night--the silence--the flight--and the wonderful Indian
stealing with the slow inevitableness of doom upon another sentinel.
An hour passed and Gale seemed to have become deadened to all sense of
hearing. There were no more sounds in the world. The desert was as
silent as it was black. Yet again came that strange change in the
tensity of Gale's ear-strain, a check, a break, a vibration--and this
time the sound did not go nameless. It might have been moan of wind or
wail of far-distant wolf, but Gale imagined it was the strangling
death-cry of another guard, or that strange, involuntary utterance of
the Yaqui. Blanco Sol trembled in all his great frame, and then Gale
was certain the sound was not imagination.