her handsome.

"Thanks, but I'll go," he replied, and, taking the bridle again, he
started down the slope. At every step he sank into the deep, soft
sand. Down a little way he came upon a pile of tin cans; they were
everywhere, buried, half buried, and lying loose; and these gave
evidence of how the trader lived. Presently Shefford discovered that
the Indian girl was following him with her own pony. Looking upward
at her against the light, he thought her slender, lithe, picturesque.
At a distance he liked her.

He plodded on, at length glad to get out of the drifts of sand to the
hard level floor of the valley. This, too, was sand, but dried and
baked hard, and red in color. At some season of the year this immense
flat must be covered with water. How wide it was, and empty! Shefford
experienced again a feeling that had been novel to him--and it was
that he was loose, free, unanchored, ready to veer with the wind.
From the foot of the slope the water hole had appeared to be a few
hundred rods out in the valley. But the small size of the figures
made Shefford doubt; and he had to travel many times a few hundred
rods before those figures began to grow. Then Shefford made out
that they were approaching him.

Thereafter they rapidly increased to normal proportions of man and
beast. When Shefford met them he saw a powerful, heavily built young
man leading two ponies.

"You're Mr. Presbrey, the trader?" inquired Shefford.

"Yes, I'm Presbrey, without the Mister," he replied.