He crawled out into a smooth undisturbed space and fell to work with
the point of his knife. Carefully he raised piece after piece of the
natural mosaic, inverted it and laid it back in its appointed place. At
the end of two hours he finished. There, in inlaid letters of creamy
white against the desert brown, his message flared almost imperishable:

Friend, look in my canteen and see that I get justice.

A century must pass before that message faded; as for the coming of the
messenger, he would leave that to the Almighty.

The Desert Rat was going fast now. He moved back a few feet, fearful
that at the end he might obliterate his message. With his fading gaze
fixed on the mouth of the canyon he lay waiting, hoping, praying, brave
to the last ... and presently help came.

It was the Night Watchman!




CHAPTER III


Serenely indifferent to the fact that but a few hours' average running
time intervenes between it and San Francisco on the north, and Los
Angeles on the south, the little desert station of San Pasqual has
always insisted upon remaining a frontier town.

One can pardon San Pasqual readily for this apparent apathy. Not to do