CHAPTER IV.
Three wild-horse hunters made camp one night beside a little stream in the Sevier Valley, five hundred miles, as a crow flies, from Bostil's Ford.
These hunters had a poor outfit, excepting, of course, their horses.
They were young men, rangy in build, lean and hard from life in the saddle, bronzed like Indians, still-faced, and keen-eyed.

Two of them appeared to be tired out, and lagged at the camp-fire duties.

When the meager meal was prepared they sat, cross-legged, before a ragged tarpaulin, eating and drinking in silence.
The sky in the west was rosy, slowly darkening.

The valley floor billowed away, ridged and cut, growing gray and purple and dark.

Walls of stone, pink with the last rays of the setting sun, inclosed the valley, stretching away toward a long, low, black mountain range.
The place was wild, beautiful, open, with something nameless that made the desert different from any other country.