To have been caught there in a week of rain with an army would have been fatal, for the mud is deep and sticky and our horses would have mired and the Kalkars fallen upon us and destroyed us.

They greatly outnumber us, and so our only hope must lie in our mobility. We realize that we are reducing this by taking along our women and our flocks; but we believe that so desperate will be our straits that we must conquer, since the only alternative to victory must be death-death for us and worse for our women and children.

The clans have been gathering for two days, and all are there-some fifty thousand souls; and of horses, cattle, and sheep there must be a thousand thousand, for we are rich in livestock. In the last two months, at my orders, all our swine have been slaughtered and smoked, for we could not be hampered by them on the long desert march, even if they could have survived it.

There is water in the desert this time of year and some feed, but it will be a hard, a terrible march. We shall lose a great deal of our stock, one in ten, perhaps; the Wolf thinks it may be as high as five in ten.

We shall start to-morrow an hour before sunset, making a short march of about ten miles to a place where there is a spring along the trail the ancients used. It is strange to see all across the desert evidence of the great work they accomplished. After five hundred years the location of their well graded trail, with its wide, sweeping curves, is plainly discernible. It is a narrow trail, but there are signs of another, much wider, that we discover occasionally. It follows the general line of the other, crossing it and recrossing it, without any apparent reason, time and time again. It is almost obliterated by drifting sand, or washed away by the rain of ages. Only where it is of material like stone has it endured.

The pains those ancients took with things! The time and men and effort they expended! And for what? They have disappeared, and their works with them.

As we rode that first night Rain Cloud was often at my side, and as usual he was gazing at the stars.

"Soon you will know all about them," I said, laughing, "for you are always spying upon them. Tell me some of their secrets."

"I am learning them," he replied seriously.

"Only the Flag, who put them there to light our way at night knows them all," I reminded him.

He shook his head. "They were there, I think, long before the Flag existed."

"Hush!" I admonished him. "Speak no ill of the Flag."

"I speak no ill of it," he replied. "It stands for all to me. I worship it, even as you; yet still I think the stars are older than the Flag, as the earth must be older than the Flag."

"The Flag made the earth," I reminded him.

"Then where did it abide before it made the earth?" he asked.

I scratched my head. "It is not for us to ask," I replied. "It is enough that our fathers told us these things. Why would you question them?"

"I would know the truth."

"What good will it do you?" I asked.

This time it was the Rain Cloud who scratched.

"It is not well to be ignorant," he replied at last. "Beyond the desert, wherever I have ridden, I have seen hills. I know not what lies beyond those hills. I should like to see.

To the west is the ocean. In my day, perhaps, we shall reach it. I shall build a canoe and go forth upon the ocean and see what lies beyond."

"You will come to the edge of the world and tumble over it, and that will be the end of your canoe and you."

"I do not know about that," he replied. "You think the earth is flat."

"And who is there that does not think so? Can we not see that it is flat? Look about you-it is like a large, round, flat cake."

"With land in the center and water all round the land?" he asked.

"Of course."

"What keeps the water from running off the edge?" he wanted to know.

I had never thought about that, and so I returned the only answer that I could think of at the time.

"The Flag, of course," I said.

"Do not be a fool, my brother," said Rain Cloud. "You are a great warrior and a mighty chief; you should be wise, and the wise man knows that nothing, not even the Flag, can keep water from running down hill if it is not confined."

"Then it must be confined," I argued. "There must be land to hold the water from running over the edge of the world."

"And what is beyond that land?"

"Nothing," I replied confidently.

"What do the hills stand on? What does the earth stand on?"

"It floats on a great ocean," I explained.

"With hills around it to keep its water from running over its edge?"

"I suppose so."

"And what upholds that ocean and those hills?" he went on.

"Do not be foolish," I told him. "I suppose there must be another ocean below that one."

"And what holds it up?"

I thought he would never stop. I do not enjoy thinking about such useless things. It is a waste of time, yet now that he had started me thinking, I saw that I should have to go on until I had satisfied him. Somehow I had an idea that dear little Rain Cloud was poking fun at me, and so I bent my mind to the thing and really thought, and when I did think I saw how foolish is the belief that we all hold.

"We know only about the land that we can see and the oceans that we know exist, because others have seen them," I said at last.