Occasionally a dwarfed mesquite raised its prickly leaves and rustled
mournfully. With the exception of the riders and an occasional Gila
monster, no life was discernible. Cacti of all shapes and sizes reared
aloft their forbidding spines or spread out along the sand. All was
dead, ghastly; all was oppressive, startlingly repellent in its
sinister promise; all was the vastness of desolation.
Hopalong knew this portion of the desert for ten miles inward-he had
rescued straying cattle along its southern rim- but once beyond that
limit they would have to trust to chance and their own abilities.
There were water holes on this skillet, but nine out of ten were death
traps, reeking with mineral poisons, colored and alkaline. The two
mentioned by Buck could not be depended on, for they came and went,
and more than one luckless wanderer had depended on them to allay his
thirst, and had died for his trust.
So the scouts rode on in silence, noting the half-buried skeletons of cattle
which were strewn plentifully on all sides. Nearly three per cent, of the cattle be-
longing to the Double Arrow yearly found death on this tableland, and
the herds of that ranch numbered many thousand heads. It was this
which made the Double Arrow the poorest of the ranches, and it was
this which allowed insufficient sentries in its line-houses. The
skeletons were not all of cattle, for at rare intervals lay the sand-
worn frames of men.
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