Reply Paid by H. F. Heard Page B

however, Mr. Mycroft’s reaction. “That breast-high scent is all right for those who want only a morning gallop but not for true hunting.” He went to where the eight little indentions and the two broader prints left the sand and passed up onto the shingle. Once or twice he cast his eye, turning his head on one side. “It’s fortunate,” he said, “that the sun isn’t yet very high. Look, you can just see in the shingle the hint of a trail.”
    So, stooping and starting, we covered, I suppose, the best part of a mile. The lake, evidently, long before it dried up, had had a shallow end of pebble beach on which the waves broke on rough days, making a rough foreshore. It was exhausting going, for the sun was getting up, the surface was unpleasant walking, and we were at an altitude which already made me feel more out of condition than perhaps I actually was. All this made, perhaps I need hardly say, little, if any, impression on my companion. The trail was everything. He made two concessions only to climate and environment: strong leather boots and a light, big-brimmed hat.
    â€œWhy,” I asked, mainly to break the silence and gain a pause in our scurry forward, “why didn’t we bring the baggage?” Besides, then we would have had to have a burro, and being able to hold onto one then, seemed to me, would be a great relief.
    â€œWe won’t want our gear yet,” he said. “This is a trial cast.” After another half-dozen quizzes and scurries forward, he stopped. “The sun’s getting to be no use.”
    â€œYou mean it’s getting to be a confounded nuisance!”
    â€œOh, this isn’t heat,” he smiled. “We’d have to go on if it were only that. There’s not enough oblique shadow to show the tracks in the shingle now.”
    He looked round him and then, very much like an old but lively goat, began to scramble up a huge boulder which lay in the shingle, thrown there, I suppose, by some earthquake. He saw handholds and footings in it as shrewdly as he had seen in the shingle the faint blurred traces of the ten footsteps which we were pursuing. Gently and without strain, he worked his way up until he stood on the top, some twenty feet above my head. Taking small binoculars from his pocket, he swept the desolation ahead. In a couple of minutes more he was beside me again.
    â€œYou sometimes can find a lost track again if you can get a little above it. Fifty feet above water you’ll see much deeper and clearer than when looking down immediately above the surface. I think I can see how the trail goes over the further shingle and I’m pretty certain that on beyond, on another sand stretch, I can see marks going forward as before.”
    Another panting, stumbling advance and we were at the sand. Sure enough, the trail went on clearly once more. It was only a short spell, however, and this time it ended not in shingle but in hard ground on which not a shadow of a trace remained.
    I must say that it was with relief I remarked, “Now we shall have to stop.”
    â€œWell, you wait behind this rock out of the sun while I scout around.” I lay down and watched the indefatigable old figure turning and dipping just like some great stork looking for small frogs under stones. After some ten minutes of this he paused for a little at one spot, bent down, then turned and called me. Unwillingly I got up on my feet and went over.
    â€œYou see”—that familiar opening, but I was quicker now.
    â€œYes, a small bush of desert holly,” I answered, “and it’s been pulled about quite lately.”
    â€œRight; one of the burros took a bite at it. Hardly a refreshing leaf, that ghostly prickle. But look, he took it in his mouth and it acted as a kind of chewing gum. He turned it over and then”—all the while we were again scudding along in the intense heat—“bit by bit he let the chewed