crime he felt safe.




CHAPTER II


It was still dark when the Desert Rat regained consciousness. He lay
for quite a while thereafter, turning things over in his befuddled
brain, striving to gather together the tangled thread of the events of
the night. Eventually he succeeded in driving his faculties into line.
He rolled over, got to his hands and knees and paused a minute to get a
fresh grip on himself. His aching head hung low, like that of a dying
horse; in the silence of the night he could hear the drip, drip of his
blood into the sand.

Presently he began to move. Round and round in the sage he crawled,
like some weary wounded animal, breaking off the rotten dead limbs
which, lie close to the base of the shrub. Three piles of sage he
gathered, placing the piles in a row twenty feet apart. Then he set
fire to them and watched them burst into flame.

It was the desert call for help: three fires in a row by night, three
columns of smoke against the horizon by day--and the Cahuilla Indian,
coming down the draw from Chuckwalla Tanks five miles away, saw flaming
against the dawn this appeal of the white man he loved, for whom he
lived and labored. Straight across the desert he ran, with the long
tireless stride that was the heritage of his people. His large heavy
shoes retarded him; he removed them, tucked them under his arm and with