flung a menace at him. An irresistible call had drawn him to this
seamed and peaked border of Arizona, this broken battlemented
wilderness of Utah upland; and at first sight they frowned upon him,
as if to warn him not to search for what lay hidden beyond the ranges.
But Shefford thrilled with both fear and exultation. That was the
country which had been described to him. Far across the red valley,
far beyond the ragged line of black mesa and yellow range, lay the
wild canyon with its haunting secret.

Red Lake must be his Rubicon. Either he must enter the unknown to
seek, to strive, to find, or turn back and fail and never know and be
always haunted. A friend's strange story had prompted his singular
journey; a beautiful rainbow with its mystery and promise had decided
him. Once in his life he had answered a wild call to the kingdom of
adventure within him, and once in his life he had been happy. But
here in the horizon-wide face of that up-flung and cloven desert he
grew cold; he faltered even while he felt more fatally drawn.

As if impelled Shefford started his horse down the sandy trail, but he
checked his former far-reaching gaze. It was the month of April, and
the waning sun lost heat and brightness. Long shadows crept down the
slope ahead of him and the scant sage deepened its gray. He watched
the lizards shoot like brown streaks across the sand, leaving their
slender tracks; he heard the rustle of pack-rats as they darted into
their brushy homes; the whir of a low-sailing hawk startled his horse.

Like ocean waves the slope rose and fell, its hollows choked with sand,
its ridge-tops showing scantier growth of sage and grass and weed. The
last ridge was a sand-dune, beautifully ribbed and scalloped and lined
by the wind, and from its knife-sharp crest a thin wavering sheet of