He found it a task of some
magnitude.
For Senor Buck Johnson lived just north of that terra incognita
filled with the mystery of a double chance of death from man or
the flaming desert known as the Mexican border. There, by
natural gravitation, gathered all the desperate characters of
three States and two republics. He who rode into it took good
care that no one should ride behind him, lived warily, slept
light, and breathed deep when once he had again sighted the
familiar peaks of Cochise's Stronghold. No one professed
knowledge of those who dwelt therein. They moved, mysterious as
the desert illusions that compassed them about. As you rode, the
ranges of mountains visibly changed form, the monstrous, snaky,
sea-like growths of the cactus clutched at your stirrup, mock
lakes sparkled and dissolved in the middle distance, the sun beat
hot and merciless, the powdered dry alkali beat hotly and
mercilessly back--and strange, grim men, swarthy, bearded,
heavily armed, with red-rimmed unshifting eyes, rode silently out
of the mists of illusion to look on you steadily, and then to
ride silently back into the desert haze. They might be only the
herders of the gaunt cattle, or again they might belong to the
Lost Legion that peopled the country.
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