Читать книгу Selected Short Works - Zane Grey - Страница 4

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NOW that it was spring again, old Jim Crawford slowly responded to the call of the desert. He marked this fact with something of melancholy. Every winter took a little more out of him. Presently he would forget it, when he was once more out on the lonely and peaceful wasteland, hunting for the gold he had never found and for which he had given the best years of his life.

Still, Jim seemed a little more loath to bring in his burros and pack for the long trail. He sat on the sunny side of the shack and pondered. The peaks were glistening snow-white, the lower slopes showed patches and streaks of snow under the black pines, but the foothills were clean and gray, just beginning to green and purple over. High time that he be up and doing, if he were ever to find that treasure at the foot of the rainbow.

"Reckon I've grown fond of this lad, Al Shade," soliloquized the old prospector, as he refilled his pipe. "An' I just don't want to leave for the desert with things the way they are for him."

Jim Crawford's shack stood at the edge of the pinewoods on the slope opposite the lumber mill and was the last habitation on the outskirts of Pine, a small town devoted to lumbering and cattle raising. The next house toward town was a picturesque log cabin, just up in the pines and within plain view, as Jim had found to his sorrow. Jim's neighbor, Seth Low, was a millhand, a genial and likable fellow with only one fault—an over-fondness for drink, which had kept him poor. He had a complaining wife and five children, the eldest of whom, Ruby Low, seventeen years old, red- haired and red-lipped, with eyes of dark wicked fire, had been the cause of no little contention in the community.

Jim had seen Ruby carrying on with cowboys and lumberjacks in a way that amused him, even thrilled him a little for his pulses were not yet dead to the charm of beauty and youth. But when Ruby attached Al Shade to her list of admirers, the circumstances had grown serious for Jim. And he was thinking of that now, while he listened to the melodious hum of the great saw, and watched the yellow smoke arise from the mill stack, and felt the old call of the desert in the spring, something he had not resisted for thirty years.

Long ago, in a past slowly growing clear again in memory, he had been father to a little boy who might have grown into such a fine lad as Alvin Shade. That was one reason why he had taken such a liking to Al. But there were other reasons, which were always vivid in mind when Al appeared.

A cowboy galloped by, bright face shining, with scarf flying in the wind. Jim did not need to be told he would stop at the Low cabin. His whistle, just audible to Jim, brought the little slim Ruby out, her hair matching the boy's scarf. He was a bold fellow, unfamiliar to Jim, and without a glance at the open cabin door or the children playing under the trees, he snatched Ruby off the ground, her heels kicking up, and, bending, he gave her a great hug. Jim watched with the grim thought that this spectacle would not have been a happy one for Al Shade to see.

The cowboy let the girl down, and, sliding out of his saddle, they found a seat on a fallen pine, and then presently slipped down to sit against the tree, on the side hidden from the cabin. They did not seem to care that Jim's shack was in sight, not so very far away. Most cowboys were lover-like and masterful, not to say bold, but this fellow either embodied more of these qualities than any others Jim had seen with Ruby, or else he had received more encouragement. After a few moments of keen observation Jim established that both possibilities were facts. He saw enough not to want to see more, and he went into his shack sorrowing for the dream of his young friend Alvin.

Straightway Jim grew thoughtful. He had more on his hands than the problem of getting ready for his annual prospecting trip. If a decision had not been wrung from him, it certainly was in the making. Dragging his packsaddles and camp equipment out on the porch, he set morosely to going over them. He wasted no more glances in the direction of the Low cabin.

Eventually the mill whistle blew. The day was Saturday, and the millhands got off at an early hour. Not many minutes afterward the old prospector heard a familiar quick step, and he looked up gladly.

"Howdy, old-timer," came a gay voice. "What you-all doin' with this camp truck?"

"Al, I'm gettin' ready to hit the trail," replied the prospector.

"Aw, no, Jim. Not so early! Why, it's only May, an' the snow isn't off yet," protested the young man, in surprise and regret.

"Set down a while. Then I'll walk to town with you. I'm goin' to buy supplies."

Al threw down his dinner pail and then his old black hat, and stood a moment looking at Crawford. He was a tall, rangy young man, about twenty-one, dressed in overalls redolent of fresh sawdust. He had a frank, handsome face, keen blue eyes just now shaded with regret, and a square chin covered by a faint silky down as fair as his hair. Then he plumped down on the porch.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It's good of you, Al, if you mean you'll miss me," replied the prospector.

"I sure mean that. But there's somethin' else. Jim, you're not growin' any younger, an' you... well, these eight-month trips on the desert must be tough, even for an old desert rat like you. Forgive me, old-timer. But I've seen you come back... four, five times now, an' each time you seemed more done up. Jim, you might die out there."

"'Course, I might. It's what I want when my time comes."

"Aw! But that should be a long while yet, if you've got any sense. Jim, you've taken the place of my dad."

"Glad to hear it, son," replied Crawford warmly.

"Suppose you come live with mother an' me," suggested Al eagerly.

"An' let you take care of me?"

"No, I don't mean that. Jim, you can work. We've got a little land, even if it is mortgaged. But if we cultivate it... if we had a couple of horses ... the two of us..."

"Al, it's not a bad idea. I've thought of that before. There's plenty of work left in me yet. But I'd only want to tackle that after I'd made a strike. Then we could pay off your debts, stock the place, an' farm right."

"Jim, you've thought of that?" asked Al.

"Lots of times."

"I didn't know you thought so much of me. Gosh, wouldn't it be grand!" Then his face fell, and he added ruefully: "But you old prospectors never make a strike."

"Sometimes we do," replied Jim, vehemently nodding.

"Aw, your hopes are like the mirages you tell about."

"Al, I've never told you about Amber's mirage."

"Nope. That's a new one. Come on, old-timer... if it isn't too long."

"Not today, son. Tomorrow, if you come over."

"Well, I'll come. Ruby has flagged me again for that Raston cowpuncher," rejoined Shade with a touch of pathos.

"Raston. Who's he?" queried Jim, looking up.

"Oh, he's a new one. A flash cowboy, good-lookin' an' the son of a rich cattleman who has taken over the Babcock ranches."

"Uhn-huh. Reckon I remember hearin' about Raston. But he hasn't paid for those big range interests yet. Al, is young Raston sweet on Ruby?"

"Sure. Same as all those other galoots. Only he's the latest. An' Ruby is powerful set up about him."

"Humph. Does she encourage him?" asked Jim, bending to pick up a saddle cinch.

"She sure does," burst out Al in disgust. "We've had rows over that often enough."

"Al, you're deep in love with Ruby?" asked Crawford suddenly.

"Head over heels. I'm drownin'," replied the lad, with his frank laugh.

"Are you engaged to her?"

"Well, I am to her, but I guess she isn't to me... at least, not all the time. Jim, it's this way... I just know Ruby likes me better than any of them. I don't know why. She's sure been thicker with other fellows than with me. But that's not so much. Ruby likes conquest. She loves to ride an' dance an' eat. She's full of the devil. There's been more than one fellow like Raston come along to take her away from me. But she always comes back. She just can't help herself."

"Uhn-huh. What does your mother think of Ruby?"

The boy hesitated, then replied: "Ruby often comes over to our house. Mother doesn't exactly approve of her. She says Ruby is half good an' half bad. But she believes if I could give Ruby what she craves... why, she'd marry me, an' turn out all right. Jim, it's my only hope."

"But you can't afford that on your wages," protested Jim.

"I sure can't. But I save all the money possible, Jim. I haven't even a horse. Me... who was born on a horse! But I'll get ahead somehow... unless somethin' awful happens. Jim, now an' then I'm blue."

"I shouldn't wonder. Al, do you think Ruby is worth this... this love an' constancy of yours?"

"Sure she is. But what's that got to do with it? You don't love somebody because she or he is so an' so. You do it because you can't help yourself."

"Reckon you're right at that," replied Jim slowly. "But suppose a... a girl is just plain no good?"

"Jim, you're not insinuatin'... ?" ejaculated Al, aghast at the thought.

"No, I'm just askin' on general principles, since you make a general statement."

Al's face seemed to take on an older and yet gentler expression than Jim had ever observed there.

"Jim," he said, "it oughtn't to make no difference."

"Humph. Mebbe it oughtn't, but it sure does with most men. Son, there's only one way for you to fulfill your dream... if it's at all possible."

"An' how's that?" queried Al sharply.

"You've got to get money quick."

"Lord! Don't I know that? Haven't I lain awake at nights thinkin' about it. But, Jim, I can't rustle cattle or hold up the mill on pay day."

"Reckon you can't. But, Al Shade, I'll tell you what... you can go with me!"

"Jim Crawford! On your next prospectin' trip?"

"You bet. The idee just came to me. Al, I swear I never thought of it before."

"Gosh almighty!" stammered Al.

"Isn't it a stunnin' idee?" queried Jim, elated.

"I should smile... if I only dared!"

"Wal, you can dare. Between us, we can leave enough money with your mother to take care of her while we're gone. An' what else is there?"

"Jim... you ask that!" burst out Al violently. "There's Ruby Low, you dreamin' old rainbow chaser! Leave her for eight months? It can't be did!"

"Better that than forever," retorted Crawford ruthlessly. He was being impelled by a motive he had not yet defined.

"Jim!" cried the young man.

"Al, it's you who's the rainbow chaser. You've only one chance in a million to get Ruby. Be a good gambler an' take it. Ruby's a kid yet. She'll think more of fun than marriage yet a while. You've just about got time. What do you say, son?"

"Say! Man, you take my breath."

"You don't need any breath to think," responded the old prospector, strangely thrilled by a subtle conviction that he would be successful. "Come, I'll walk to town with you."

On the way the sober young man scarcely opened his lips, and Jim was content to let the magnitude of his suggestion sink deeply.

"Gosh. I wonder what Ruby would say," murmured Al to himself.

"Wal, here's where I stop," said Jim heartily, as they reached the store. "Al, shall I buy grub an' outfit for two?"

"Aw... give me time," implored Al.

"Better break it to your mother tonight an' come over tomorrow," returned Jim, and left Al standing there, his mouth open, his eyes dark and startled.

Seldom did the old prospector answer to unconsidered impulse. But he seemed driven here by something beyond his immediate understanding. Through it flashed the last glimpse he had taken of Ruby Low and the lover whom Jim took to be young Raston. Jim felt that he was answering to an inspiration. One way or another—a successful quest for gold or failure—he would make Al Shade's fortune or spare him inevitable heartbreak. Some vague portent of Amber's mirage ran like a stream through Jim's thought.

He bought supplies and outfits for two, and generously, for he had never been careful of his meager funds. Leaving orders for the purchase to be sent to his place, Jim started back with quickened step.

It was a great project. It had a flourish and allurement that never before had attended his prospecting trips, although they all had fascination enough. He tried to evade queries and rest content with the present, well knowing that, when once more he had been claimed by the lonely desert, all his curiosity and doubt would vanish. Then came a rush of impatient sensation —a nostalgia for sight of the long leagues of lonely land, the bleak rocks, the solemn cañons, the dim hazy purple distances, ever calling —smell of the cedar smoke, the sifting sand, the dry sage, the marvelous fresh fragrance after rain—sound of the mournful wind, the wailing coyote, the silence that was appalling, the cry of the nighthawk.

These passed over him like a magic spell. A rapture pervaded his soul. How could he have lingered so long?

A gay voice calling disrupted Jim's meditation. Already he had reached the outskirts of town, and he was opposite the Low cabin with Ruby waylaying him at the gate. Her red hair flamed, and her lips were like cherries. She transfixed him with a dazzling smile.

"Uncle Jim, I was layin' for you," she said archly. "I hate to ask you, but I've got to have some money."

Ruby sometimes borrowed, and on at least two occasions Jim remembered she had paid back.

"Wal, lass, I'm about broke myself," he replied. "But I can rake up five wagon wheels. Will that help?"

"Thanks, Uncle Jim. It'll sure do. I just want to buy somethin' for tonight. I'm goin' to a party," she said, as she took the silver, and then ran her arm through his. "I'll walk over to your house with you."

Jim could not reproach Ruby for any indifference to him, that was certain. She liked him and often told him her troubles, especially with the boys.

"Another party, huh? I reckon this time you're goin' with Al," rejoined Jim.

"No. He didn't ask me, an' Joe Raston did. Besides, Al an' I have fought like cat an' dog lately. Al's jealous."

"Wal, hasn't he cause?" asked Jim mildly.

"I s'pose he has, Uncle," she admitted. "But I'm not... quite... altogether engaged to Al. An' I do like the other boys, 'specially Joe."

"I see. It's pretty hard on you an' Al. Say, Ruby, do you really care about the boy? Tell me straight."

"Uncle Jim!" she exclaimed, amazed.

"Wal, I just wondered. I seen you today over back of that pine log, an' it looked to me..."

"You saw me... with Joe?" she interrupted confusedly.

"I don't know Joe. But the cowboy wore a scarf as red as your head."

"That was Joe. An' you watched us! I told the big fool..."

"Ruby, I didn't mean to spy on you. I just happened to be lookin'. An' when you slipped off that log, I sure didn't look long."

She had no reply for this. Ruby was nervously clinking the silver coins in her hand. They reached Jim's shack, and Ruby sat down on the porch steps.

"Uncle, did you give me away to Al?" she asked, and a tinge of scarlet showed under her clear skin. She was ashamed, yet no coward.

Jim gazed down upon her, somehow seeing her as never before. He realized that he had reason to despise her, but he did not. At least he could not when she was actually present in the flesh. Ruby had seen only seventeen summers, but she did not seem a child. Her slim form had the contours of a woman. And like a flaming wildflower she was beautiful to look at.

"No, Ruby, I didn't give you away to Al," replied Jim presently.

"You're not going to, Uncle?"

"Wal, as to that..."

"Please don't. It'll only hurt Al, an' not do a bit of good. He has been told things before. But he didn't believe them. An' he thrashed Harry Goddard. Of course, he'd believe you, Uncle Jim. But it wouldn't make no difference. An'... an' what's the sense?"

"Ruby, I reckon there wouldn't be much sense in it. Not now, anyway, when I'm takin' Al with me on a long prospectin' trip."

"What?"

Jim motioned to the packsaddles and harness strewn upon the floor, the tools and utensils.

"Oh, no! Don't take him, Uncle," she cried, and now her cheeks were pale as pearl. She caught her breath. The sloe-black eyes lost their wicked darts. They softened and shadowed with pain. "Oh, Uncle, I... I couldn't let Al go."

"Wal, lass, I'm afraid you'll not have anythin' to do with it."

"But Al would never go... if I begged him to stay."

Jim believed that was true, although he did not betray it. He felt gladness at a proof that Ruby cared genuinely for Al, although no doubt her motives were selfish.

"Mebbe not, lass. But you won't beg him."

"I sure will. I'll crawl at his feet."

"Ruby, you wouldn't stand in the way of Al's coming back home with a big lot of gold."

"Gold!" she echoed, and a light leaped up in her eyes. "But, Uncle, isn't prospectin' dangerous? Mightn't Al get killed or starve on the desert?"

"He might, sure, but he's a husky lad, an' here I've been wanderin' the desert for thirty years."

"How long would you be gone?"

"Till winter comes again."

"Seven... eight months! I... I don't... believe I could bear it," she faltered weakly.

"Ruby, you'll make a deal with me not to coax him off... or I'll tell him what I saw today."

"Oh, Uncle Jim," she retorted, although she winced. "That'd be mean. I really love Al."

"Uhn-huh. You acted like it today," replied Jim dryly. "Reckon you're tryin' to tell me you love two fellows at once."

"I'm not tryin' to tell you that," she flushed hotly. "If you want to know the truth, I love only Al. But I like Joe... an' the other boys. I'd quit them in a minute, if Al had anythin'. But he's poor. An' I don't see why I should give up havin' fun while I wait for Al."

"Did Al ever try to make you give them up?" queried Jim curiously.

"No. He's pretty decent, even if he is jealous. But he doesn't like me to go with Joe."

"Wal, do we make a bargain, Ruby?"

Her red lips quivered. "You mean you won't give me away, if I don't try to keep Al home?"

"That's it."

"Wh-when are you leavin'?"

"Wal, I reckon tomorrow sometime... late afternoon."

"All right, Uncle, it's a deal," she replied soberly, and with slow reluctance she laid the five silver dollars on the porch. "I won't go to the party tonight. I'll send for Al."

"Wal, Ruby, that's good of you," said Jim warmly. "I'm goin' over to Al's after supper to see his mother, an' I'll fetch him back."

"She'll be glad to have Al go," rejoined Ruby bitterly. "She doesn't approve of me."

Jim watched the girl walk slowly down the path, her bright head bent, and her hands locked behind her. What a forlorn little creature. Suddenly Jim pitied her. After all, vain and shallow as she was, he found some excuse for her. Under happier circumstances the good in her might have dominated.

The old prospector's mind was active, revolving phases of the situation he had developed, while he prepared a hasty supper. It was dark when he started out for town. The lights were flickering, and the wind from the peaks carried a touch of snow. Al lived on the other side of town, just outside the limits, on a hundred-and- sixty-acre farm his father had homesteaded, and which, freed from debt, would be valuable some day. Jim vowed the prospecting trip would clear that land, if it did no more. A light in the kitchen of the cottage guided him, and, when he knocked, the door appeared to fly open, disclosing Al, flushed and excited, with the bright light of adventure in his blue eyes. Jim needed no more than that to set his slow heart beating high.

"Come in, old-timer," shouted Al boisterously. "No need to tell you I've knuckled. An' mother thinks it's a good idea."

Al's mother corroborated this, with reservations. She seemed keenly alive to the perils of desert treasure seeking, but she had great confidence in Jim, and ambition for her son.

"What's this Amber's mirage my boy raves about?" asked Mrs. Shade presently.

"Wal, it's somethin' I want to tell Al," replied Jim, serious because he could never think of Amber in any other way. "I knew a wonderful prospector once. An' for twenty years I've looked for his mirage on the desert."

"Gracious, is that all? How funny you gold hunters are. Please don't graft any of those queer ideas on Al."

"Say, Jim, haven't you seen this Amber's mirage?" asked Al.

"Not yet, son. But I will this trip. Wal, good night an' good bye, Missus Shade. Don't worry about Al. He'll come back, an' mebbe rich."

"Alas! I wonder if that is not the mirage you mean," returned the mother, and sighed.

Al accompanied Jim back to town and talked so fast that Jim could not get a word in, until finally they reached the store.

"No, don't come in with me," said Jim. "You run out to see Ruby."

"Ruby! Aw, what'd you want to make me think of her for? She's goin' out with Joe Raston tonight."

"Al, she's stayin' home to be with you this last night."

"Gosh!" ejaculated Al rapturously, yet incredulously. "Did you tell her?"

"Yes. An' she sure got riled. Swore she'd never let you go. I reckon she cares a heap for you, Al. An' I'm bound to confess I didn't believe it. But I talked her into seein' the chance for you, an' she's goin' to let you go."

"Let... me go," stammered Al, and he rushed away down the street.

The old prospector lingered to watch the lithe, vanishing form, and, while he stroked his beard, he thought sorrowfully of these two young people, caught in the toils of love and fate. Jim saw no happy outcome of their love, but he clung to a glimmering hope for them both.

An hour later, when he trudged homeward, thoughts of Al and Ruby magnified. It was youth that suffered most acutely. Age had philosophy and resignation. Al was in the throes of sweet, wild passion, fiercer for its immaturity. He would be constant, too. Ruby, considered apart from her bewildering presence, was not much good. She would fail Al and, failing, save him from ruin, if not heartbreak. Yet she, too, had infinite capacity for pain. Poor pretty little moth. Yet she seemed more than a weak, fluttering moth—just what, Jim could not define. But they were both facing an illusion as tragic, if not so beautiful, as Amber's mirage.

Jim felt tired when he reached his shack and was glad to sink upon the porch. The excitement and rushing around during the day had worn upon him. He bared his head to the cold, pine-scented wind. The pines were roaring. The pale peaks stood up into the dark blue, star-studded sky. To the south opened the impenetrable gloom of the desert. A voiceless call seemed to come up out of the vast windy space, and that night it made him wakeful.

But he was up at dawn, and, when it was light enough to see, he went out to hunt up his burros. They never strayed far. With the familiar task at hand again there returned the nameless pleasurable sensations of the trail. High up on the slope he found the four burros, sleek and fat and lazy, and, when he drove them, the first time for months, he had strange, dark, boding appreciation of the brevity of life. That succumbed to the exhilaration of the near approach of the solemn days and silent nights on the desert. In a few hours he would be headed down the road.

The supplies he had ordered came promptly after breakfast, and Jim was packing when Al bounded in from the porch, so marvelous in his ecstasy of flamboyant youth that Jim's heart almost failed him.

"Howdy, son," he managed to get out. And then: "I see you come light in heart as well as in pack."

"Old-timer, I could fly this mornin'!" exclaimed Al fervidly.

"Uhn-huh. Ruby must have sprouted wings on you last night," ventured Jim.

"Gosh, she was sweet. I'm ashamed to death of the things I felt an' thought. We said good bye nine hundred times... an' I sure hope it was enough."

"Wal, she'll be over before we leave, you can bet on that."

"Aw, no. I stayed late last night... gosh, it was late. Mother waited up for me. Jim, old-timer, that red-headed kid was hangin' on to me at one o'clock this mornin'." Al delivered that amazing statement with a vast elation.

"You ought to have spanked her."

"Spank Ruby? Gosh! It would be like startin' an avalanche or somethin'. Now, Jim, you start me packin', an' you'll think an avalanche hit this shack."

Jim did not require many moments to grasp that Al would be a helpful comrade. He was, indeed, no stranger to packing. But they had just gotten fairly well started when Ruby entered like an apparition in distress. She wore her white Sunday dress and looked lovely, despite her woeful face and tearful eyes.

"Aw... now Ruby," ejaculated Al, overwhelmed.

"Oh, Al!" she wailed, and, throwing her arms around his neck, she buried her face on his breast. "I didn't know I loved you so... or I'd been different."

Jim turned his back on them and packed as hurriedly and noisily as possible. But they had forgotten his very existence. And presently he proceeded with his work almost as if these young firebrands were not present. But they were there, dynamic, breath- arresting with the significance of their words and actions. Jim was glad. Al would have this poignant parting to remember. He sensed, and presently saw, a remorse in Ruby. What had she done? Or did her woman's intuition read a future alien to her hopes and longings? Perhaps, like Al, she lived only in the pangs of the hour.

Nevertheless, in time he wooed her out of her inconsistent mood and kissed away her tears and by some magic not in the old prospector's ken restored her smiles. She was adorable then. The Ruby that Jim had seen did not obtrude here. She entered into Al's thrilling expectancy, helped with the packing, although she took occasion now and then to peck at Al's cheek with her cherry lips, and asked a hundred questions.

"You'll fetch me a bucketful of gold?"

"I sure will, sweetheart," promised Al with fire and pride.

"A whole bucketful, like that bucket I have to lug full of water from the spring. Al, how much would a bucketful of gold buy?"

"I haven't any idea," returned Al, bewildered at the enchanting prospect. The light in his eyes, as it shone upon her, hurt the old prospector so sharply that he turned away. "Hey, old-timer, what could I buy Ruby with a bucketful of gold?"

"Wal, a heap of things an' that's no lie," replied Jim profoundly. "A house an' lot in town, or a ranch. Hosses, cattle, a wagonload of pretty clothes, an' then have some left for trinkets, not to forget a diamond ring."

Ruby screamed her rapture and swung around Al's neck.

It went on this way until at last the burros were packed and ready. Jim took up his canteen and the long walking stick, and shut the door of the shack with a strange finality.

"Son, I'll go on ahead," he said thickly. "You can catch up. But don't let me get out of sight down the road. Ruby, you have my blessin' an' my prayers. Good bye."

She kissed him, although still clinging to Al, but she could not speak.

"Get up, you burros!" called Jim, and he drove them down the road.

After a while he looked back. The young couple had disappeared and were very likely in the shack, saying good bye all over again. Jim strode on for half a mile before he turned once more. Ruby's white form gleamed on the little porch. Al had started. He was running and looking back. Jim found himself the victim of unaccountable emotions, one of which seemed a mingling of remorse and reproach. Would it have been possible to have done better by Al? He did not see how. After a while he gained confidence again, although the complexity of the situation did not clear. All might yet be well for Al, and Ruby, too, if the goddess who guarded the treasure of gold in the desert smiled quickly.

At the turn of the road Al caught up, panting from his run. "Gosh, but... that was... tough!"

He did not glance back, and neither did Jim. Soon they turned a bend between the foothills. The sun was still high enough to shed warmth, although the air was cooling. They were leaving the mountains and descending into the desert, glimpses of which could be seen through the passes. Piñons and cedars took the place of pines, and the sage and bleached grama grass thickened.

Al regained his breath and kept pace with Jim, but he did not have anything to say.

Jim wanted to reach Cedar Tanks before dark, a campsite that was well situated for the initiative, for it regulated succeeding stops just about right. This first water was down on the flat still some four or five miles distant. Jim found a spring in his stride that had been missing for months. He was on the heels of the burros, occasionally giving one a slap.

The last foothill, rather more of a mound than a hill, was bare of cedars and had a lone piñon on top, and the sides were flush with a weed that took on a tinge of pink. When this obstruction had been rounded, the desert lay below.

No doubt Al had seen it before from that vantage point, but never with the significance of this moment, which halted him stockstill.

The sun was setting red and gold over the western confines, where the lights were brilliant. Just below the travelers there were flats of grass, and belts of cedars, and, farther on, bare plains of rock, all in the ruddy shadow. Leagues away buttes and mesas stood up, sunset-flushed, and, between them and farther on, wild, broken outlines of desert showed darkly purple. A bold and open space it was, not yet forbidding, but with a hint of obscure and unknown limits.

One long gaze filled Jim Crawford with sustaining strength. His eye swept like that of an eagle. This was a possession of his soul, and whatever it was that had clamped him in perplexity and doubt faded away.

It was dark when they reached Cedar Tanks, which consisted of a water hole at the head of a rocky ravine. Here Al found his tongue. The strain of parting gave precedence to the actuality of adventure. While they unpacked the burros, he volleyed questions, which Jim answered when it was possible. He remembered the stops all the way across the border. Turkey Creek was the next, then Blackstone, then Green Water, Dry Camp, Greasewood, and on to Coyote Wells, Papago Springs, Mesquite, and then a nameless trail that had as its objective the volcanic peak of Pinacate.

Al packed up water and wood, and built a fire while Jim prepared their first meal, a somewhat elaborate one, he said, to celebrate the start of their expedition. Not in many years had Jim Crawford had a companion in camp. He had been a lone prospector, but he found this change a pleasure. He would not have to talk to the burros or himself. After all, the start had been auspicious.

"Jim, have you ever been to Pinacate?" asked Al.

"Yes. It's an infernal region in midsummer. But I've never been to the place we're headin' for."

"An' where's that?"

"Wal, I know an' I don't know. I call it Three Round Hills. They lay somewhere in from the Gulf of California, a couple of hundred miles below the mouth of the Colorado. It's in Sonora. We get through Yaqui country an' then right into the land of the Seris."

"An' who are the Seris?"

"Wal, they're about the lowest order of humans I know anythin' about. A disappearin' Indian tribe. Cannibals, accordin' to some prospectors I've met. They live in the Gulf durin' the dry season. But when it rains an' the water holes are full, they range far up an' down the coast an' inland. So we've got to dodge them."

"Gosh! You didn't tell mother or Ruby that," remarked Al.

"No, I didn't. An' I reckon I haven't told you a great deal yet."

"Then there's gold in this Seri country," asserted Al, thrilled.

"There sure is. All over Sonora for that matter. But somewhere close under Three Round Hills a wash starts an' runs six miles or so down to the Gulf. I met a prospector who dry-panned gold all along this wash. So rich, he never tried to find the lead from which the gold came. An' he never dug down. Gold settles, you know. He was afraid the Seris would locate him an' poison his water hole. So he didn't stay in long, an' after that he couldn't find the Three Round Hills again."

"An' you're goin' to find them?"

"Reckon we are, son. I feel it in my bones. I believe I can locate them from Pinacate. I brought a powerful field glass, somethin' I never had with me before. If I can locate them, we'll travel across country from Pinacate, instead of workin' down to the Gulf. That would take weeks. We'd have to travel at night along the beach, at low tide, so the water would wash out our tracks. An' then we couldn't find those hills from the shore. I've been savin' this trip for ten years, Al."

"Gosh! An' where does Amber's mirage come in?" went on Al, who had forgotten his supper for the moment.

"Wal, it won't come in at all unless we see it."

"Who was Amber, anyhow?"

"I don't know, except he was a prospector like myself. Queer character. I always wondered if he was right in his mind. But he knew all about the desert."

"Jim, what was the difference between his mirage an' any other?"

"Son, did you ever see a mirage?" asked Jim.

"Sure. Lots of them. All alike, though. Just sheets of blue water on flat ground. Pretty, an' sort of wonderful."

"Wal, you really never saw a mirage, such as I have in mind. The great an' rare mirages are in the sky. Not on the ground. An' mostly they're upside down."

"Jim, I never heard of such a thing."

"Wal, it's true. I've seen some. Beautiful lakes an' white cities. An' once I saw a full-rigged ship."

"No!" exclaimed Al incredulously.

"Sure did. An' they were sights to behold."

"Gosh! Come, old-timer, tell me now about Amber's mirage!" cried the young man impetuously, as if lured on against his will.

The old prospector laid aside his cup, as if likewise impelled, and, wiping his beard, he bent solemn gaze on the young man, and told his story.

Al stared. His square jaw dropped a little, and his eyes reflected the opal lights of the cedar fire.

"An' Amber died after seein' that mirage!" gasped Al.

"Yes, son. There's two men livin' besides me who heard him tell about it an' who saw him die."

"But, old-timer," expostulated Al, sweeping his hand through his yellow locks, "all that might have been his imagination. What's a mirage but an illusion?"

"Sure. Perhaps it's more of a lyin' trick of the mind than a sight. But the strange fact, an' the hard one to get around, is that soon after Amber's death a great gold strike was made there. Right on the spot!"

"Jim, you old prospectors must get superstitious," returned Al.

"Reckon so. But there's no explainin' or understandin' what comes to a man from years on the desert."

"If that's true of the desert, it's true of the mountains, or any other place," argued Al.

"No. The desert is like the earth in the beginnin'," replied the old prospector sagely. "After a while it takes a man back to what he was when he first evolved from some lower organism. He gets closer to the origin of life an' the end of life."

"Gosh, old-timer, you're too deep for me," said Al with a laugh. "But if it's all the same to you, I'd just as lief you didn't see Amber's mirage this trip."

It was June, and Jim Crawford had been lost in the desert for more than a week. At first he had endeavored to conceal the fact from his young companion, but Al had evidently known from the hour of the calamity.

One morning from the black slope of desolate Pinacate the old prospector had located the dim blue Gulf, and the mountain, San Pedro del Martir, and then, away to the southward, three round hills. He had grown tremendously excited, and nothing could have held him back. These colorful hills seemed far away to the younger man, who ventured a suggestion that it might be wise to make for the cool altitudes instead of taking a risk of being caught in that dark and terrific empire of the sun. Even now at midday the naked hand could not bear contact with the hot rocks.

They went on down into the labyrinth of black craters and red cañons, and across fields of cactus, ablaze with their varied and vivid blossoms. The palo verde shone gold in the sun, the ocotillo scarlet, and the dead palo christi like soft clouds of blue smoke in the glaring sand washes. The magnificent luxuriance of the desert growths deceived the eye, but at every end of a maze of verdure there loomed the appalling desolation and decay of the rock fastnesses of the earth.

From time to time the gold seekers caught a glimpse of the three round hills that began to partake of the deceitfulness of desert distance. They grew no closer apparently, but higher, larger, changing as if by magic into mountains. These glimpses spurred Crawford on, and the young prospector, knowing that they were lost, grew indifferent to the peril and gave himself fully to the adventure.

They had been marvelously fortunate about locating water holes. Crawford had all the desert rat's keenness of sight and the judgment of experience. Added to this was the fact that one of his burros, Jenester, could scent water at incredible distances. But one night they had to make dry camp. The next day was hot. It took all of it to find water. And that day Three Round Hills, as they had come to call them, disappeared as if the desert had swallowed them. Cool, sweet desert dawn, with a menacing red in the east, found the adventurers doubly lost, for now they did not even have a landmark to strive for. All points of the compass appeared about the same— barren mountains, dark cones, stark and naked shining ridges, blue ranges in the distance.

But Crawford pushed on south, more bowed every day, and lame. The burros became troublesome to drive. Jenester wanted to turn back, and the others were dominated by her instinct. Crawford, however, was ruthless and unquenchable. Al watched him, no longer with blind faith, but with the perturbation of one who saw a man guided by some sixth sense.

Nevertheless, soon he changed their order of travel, in that they slept in the daytime and went on at night. The early dawns, soft and gray and exquisite, the glorious burst of sunrise, seemed to hold the younger man enthralled, as did the gorgeous sunsets, and the marvelous creeping twilights. As for the other hours, he slept in the shade of an ironwood tree, bathed in sweat and tortured by nightmares, or he stalked silently after the implacable prospector.

They talked but little. Once Crawford asked how many days were left in June, and Al replied that he guessed about half.

"August is the hot month. We can still get out," said the prospector, rolling the pebble in his mouth. And by that he probably meant they could find gold and still escape from the fiery furnace of the desert. But he had ceased to pan sand in the washes or pick at the rocks.

The days multiplied. But try as Crawford might he could not drive the burros in a straight line. Jenester edged away to the east, which fact was not manifest until daylight.

Another dry camp, with the last of the water in their canteens used up, brought the wanderers to extremity. Crawford had pitted his judgment against the instinct of Jenester, and catastrophe faced them.

Darkness brought relief from the sun, if not from overwhelming dread. The moon came up from behind black hills, and the desert became a silvered chaos, silent as death, unreal and enchanting in its beauty.

This night Crawford gave Jenester her head, and with ears up she led to the east. The others followed eagerly. They went so fast that the men had to exert themselves to keep up. At midnight Al was lending a hand to the older man, and, when dawn broke, the young man was half supporting the old prospector. But sight of a jack rabbit and the sound of a mocking bird in melodious song saved him from collapse. Where these living creatures were, it could not be far to water.

Crawford sank less weightily upon Al's strong arm. They climbed, trailing the tracks through the aisles between the cactus thickets, around the corners of cliffs, up a slow rising ridge above the top of which three round peaks peeped, and rose, and loomed. Crawford pointed with a shaking hand and cried out unintelligibly. His spirit was greater than his strength; it was Al's sturdy arm that gained the summit for him.

"Look, old-timer," panted Al hoarsely.

Three symmetrical mountains, singular in their sameness of size and contour and magnifying all the mystery and glory of reflected sunrise, dominated a wild and majestic reach of desert. But the exceeding surprise of this sudden and totally unexpected discovery of the three peaks that had lured and betrayed the prospectors instantly gave way to an infinitely more beautiful sensation—the murmur of running water. A little below them ran a swift, shallow stream.

Crawford staggered to the shade of a shelving rock and fell with a groan that was not all thanksgiving. Al, with a thick whoop, raced down the gentle declivity.

The water was cold and sweet. It flowed out of granite or lava somewhere not far away. Al filled his canteen and hurried back to his comrade, who lay with closed eyes and pallid, moist face.

"Sit up, Jim. Here's water, an' it's good," said Al, kneeling. But he had to lift Jim's head and hold the canteen to his lips. After a long drink the old prospector smiled wanly.

"Reckon... we didn't... find it any... too soon," he said in a weak, but clear, voice. "Another day would have cooked us."

"Old-timer, we're all right now, thanks to Jenester," replied Al heartily. "Even if we are lost."

"We're not lost now, son. We've found our Three Round Hills."

"Is that so? Well, it's sure great to know. But if my eyes aren't deceivin' me, they're sure darned big for hills," rejoined Al, gazing up at the three peaks.

"Make camp here... we'll rest," said Crawford.

"You take it easy, Jim. I'll unpack."

The old prospector nodded with the reluctant air of a man who had no alternative.

By stretching a tarpaulin from the shelving rock where Crawford reclined, Al made an admirable shelter. He unrolled his comrade's bed and helped him on it. Then he unpacked utensils and some food supplies, whistling at his work. The whole world bore a changed aspect. What a miracle water could perform!

He built up a stone fireplace, and then, axe on his shoulder, he sallied down in search for wood.

Late in the afternoon, Al discovered his companion wide awake, lying with head propped high.

"Gee, I feel like I'd been beaten!" exclaimed Al. He was wet and hot. "Howdy, Old Rainbow Chaser. Are you hungry?"

"Reckon I am," replied Crawford.

"Gosh, I am too. I'll rustle a meal pronto. Whew! Strikes me it's warm here."

"Al, looks like the hot weather is comin' early," rejoined Crawford seriously.

"Comin'? Say, I think it's been with us for days."

"Wal, what I meant was hot."

"Jim, you're a queer one. What's the difference between hot an' hot?"

"Son, when it's hot you can't travel."

Al stared at his old friend. What was he driving at? On the moment the idea of travel apparently refused to stay before Al's consciousness. But a sober cast fell upon his countenance. Without more ado he got up and busied himself around the fireplace.

When the meal was ready, he spread it on a canvas beside Crawford's bed. The old man could not sit up far, and he had to be waited upon, but there was nothing wrong with his appetite. This pleased Al and reacted cheerfully upon him. While they were eating, the burro Jenester approached, her bell tinkling.

"I'll be darned. There's Jen. She's sure well trained," said Al.

"I reckon. But if you'd lived with burros on the desert as long as I have, you'd see more in it."

"Aw, she's only lookin' for some tin cans to lick," replied Al.

Nevertheless, the covert significance Crawford attached to the act of the burro seemed not to be lost upon Al. While doing the camp chores he no longer whistled. The sun grew dusky red and when it sank behind the mountains, it was as if a furnace door had been closed. Presently with the shadows a cool air came across the desert. Then twilight fell. Silence and loneliness seemed accentuated.

The old prospector lay propped up, his bright eyes upon the peaks. Al sat with his back to the rock, gazing out to see the moon come up over the weird formation of desert.

"Jim," said Al suddenly, as if a limit had been passed. "We spent weeks gettin' to your three old hills. Now what're we goin' to do that we are here?"

"Son, we used up our precious time," replied Crawford sadly. "We got lost. We're lucky to be alive."

"Sure, I'm thankful. But I'm hopin' you'll be up tomorrow, so we can look around."

If Crawford nursed a like hope, he did not voice it, which omission drew a long, steady look from the younger man. In the gloaming, however, he could not have gleaned much from his observation.

"Old-timer, I hope, too, that you had more in mind than Amber's mirage when you headed for these triplet hills."

If Al expected his sole reproach to stir Crawford, he reckoned without his host, for the old prospector vouchsafed no word on that score. Al's attempt to foster conversation, to break the oppressive silence, resulted in failure. Crawford was brooding, aloof.

Another day dawned and with it unrest.

After breakfast Crawford called his young companion to his bedside.

"Set down and let's talk," he said.

"Sure, an' I'll be darn' glad to," returned Al cheerfully, although his scrutiny of his friend's face noted a subtle change.

"Son, you've a lot on your mind," began Jim with a fleeting smile that was like a light on the dark, worn face.

"Uhn-huh, I just found it out," replied Al soberly.

"Worried about bein' lost?"

"Sure. An' a hundred other things."

"Ruby, for one?"

"Well, no, I can't say that. Ruby seems sort of far off... an' these close things are botherin' me."

"Wal, we'll dispose of them one at a time. First, then, about bein' lost. We are an' we aren't."

"I don't savvy, old-timer."

"Listen... I know where we are now, though I've never been anyways near here. You recall the prospector who told me about these Three Round Hills? Wal, he seen them from a ridge top down near the Gulf. He sure described them to a tee. An' I reckon now he wasn't ten miles from them. The wash he dry-panned so much gold from is almost certainly this one we're on. Water is scarce down here. An' he said water ran down that wash in the flood season. So I reckon we're now less than ten miles from the Gulf. This stream peters out, of course, in the sand below here somewhere. Probably halfway down, I reckon."

"Uhn-huh. An' what of all this?" queried Al suspiciously.

"Wal, a fellow could mosey on down, stoppin' in likely places to shake a pan of gold, an' in a few days reach the Gulf with at least a couple thousand dollars' worth. Then he'd have, I reckon, about six days' travel along the Gulf, bein' careful to go only by night an' at low tide, to the mouth of the Colorado. Then Yuma, where he could cash his gold dust. An' then if he happened to live in Arizona, he could get home pronto by stage."

"Sure would be wonderful for that particular fellow," returned Al, almost with sarcasm. "Funny, old-timer, now we're sittin' right under these amazin' Three Rounded Hills, that we don't give a damn much about the gold diggin's they're supposed to mark?"

"Not funny, son," reproved the grave old prospector, "but sure passin' strange. Gold makes men mad, usually. Though I could never see that I was, myself. If we'd only had good luck."

"To my notion we're most darned lucky," declared Al vehemently.

"No. If that were so, we'd've got here six weeks ago, an' I wouldn't be on my back. We'd have had time to fill some sacks an' then get out before the hot weather came."

"Oh, I see, the hot weather."

"It takes a while to heat up this old desert. Then after a while the rock an' sand hold the heat over an' every day grows hotter, until it's a torrid blastin' hell, an' white men don't dare exert themselves."

"Uhn-huh. Then I'd say we haven't many days to waste," said Al significantly.

"YOU haven't, son," replied the other gently.

"Me!"

"Yes, you, Al."

"I don't get your hunch, old-timer. You strike me queer lately."

"Wal, even if I do, I've a clear mind now, an' you may be grateful for it someday. It may have been my dream of gold that made me drag you into this hell hole, but I've got intelligence now to get you out."

"Me! What about yourself?" demanded Al sharply.

"Too late, Al. I will never get out."

The younger man rose with passionate gesture and bent eyes of blue fire down upon his reclining comrade.

"So that's it, old-timer," he asserted fiercely, clenching his fist.

"What's it, son?" queried Crawford.

"You're knocked out an' need days to rest up. But you don't want me to risk waitin', so you'd send me on ahead."

"Al, I meant to lie to you an' tell you that. But I can't do it, now I face you."

"What you mean?" flashed Al suddenly, dropping back on his knees.

"Wal, son, I mean I couldn't follow you out."

"Why couldn't you?"

"Because the rest up I'm to do here will be forever," replied Crawford.

"Jim, you're... talkin' queer again," faltered Al, plucking at his friend.

"No, son. I overreached my strength. My body was not up to my spirit. I cracked my heart... an' now, Al, pretty soon I'm goin' to die."

"Aw, my God, Jim, you're only out of your mind!" cried Al.

The old prospector shook his shaggy head. He scarcely needed to deny Al's poignant assertion. "Listen," he went on, "you put water beside me here. Then pack Jenester an' one other burro. Pack light. But take both canteens. Start tonight an' keep in the streambed. In the mornin'... early... pan some gold. But don't let the madness seize on you. It might. That yellow stuff has awful power over men. An' remember when you reach the Gulf to travel at low tide after dark."

"Jim, I couldn't leave you," rejoined Al mournfully, shaking his head.

"But you must. It's your only chance. I'm a tough old bird, an' I may live for days."

"I won't do it, old-timer," returned Al, his voice gaining.

"Son, you'll make my last days ones of grief an' regret."

"Jim, you wouldn't leave me," said Al stubbornly.

"That would be different. You have everythin' to live for, an' I have nothin'."

"I don't care. I won't... I can't do it."

"There's your mother to think of."

"She'd be the last to want me to desert my friend."

"An' Ruby. You mustn't forget that little red-headed darlin'."

Al dropped his face into his hands and groaned.

"Perhaps I misjudged Ruby. She really loves you. An' you can't risk losin' her."

"Shut up, Jim!"

"Al, if you don't go now, soon it'll be too late. I won't last long. Then you'll be stuck here. You couldn't stand the torrid months to come. You'll go mad from heat an' loneliness. And if you did survive them an' started out in the rainy season, you'd be killed by the Seris."

"I'll stick," rasped out Al, the big drops of sweat standing on his pallid brow.

"Ruby loves you, but she'll never wait that long," declared Crawford, ruthless in his intent.

Al's gesture was one of supplication.

"Ruby won't wait even as long as she promised," went on Crawford inexorably. "That Joe Raston will get 'round her. He'll persuade her you're lost. An' then he'll marry her."

"Aw, Ruby will wait," rejoined Al, swallowing hard.

"Not very long. She's weak an' vain. She needs you to bring out the good in her. Joe Raston or some other flash cowboy will work on that, if you don't hurry home."

"You're lyin', old-timer," replied Al huskily.

"I saw Raston gettin' her kisses," said Crawford. "That very day before we left."

"Honest, Jim?" whispered Al.

"I give the word of a dyin' man."

Al leaned against the rock and wrestled with his demon. Presently he turned again, haggard and wet of face. "All right," he said. "I always was afraid. But we weren't really engaged till that Saturday night."

"She can't be true to you unless you're there to hold her. Go home now, Al."

"No. I'll stand by you, an' I'll trust Ruby."

"Go, Al. I'm beggin' you."

"No."

"For your mother's sake."

"No!"

"Then for Ruby's. An' for those kisses you'll never... never get... unless you go... now!" shouted Crawford as, spent with passion, he sank back on his pillow.

"No!" yelled Al ringingly, and strode away down into the desert.

At length he came to a wide-spreading palo verde where the shade was dense and had a golden tinge. Half the yellow blossoms of this luxuriant tree lay on the ground, and it was that color rather than the shade that had halted Al. He cast himself down here, sure, indeed, of a mocking loneliness. And in the agony of that hour, when he fought to be true to his passionate denial of Crawford's entreaty, he acted like a man overwhelmed by solitude and catastrophe, yet laboring to victory under the eye of God. It was well, indeed, that the old prospector, who had brought him to this sad pass, could not likewise see him in his extremity. And what would it have meant to the wayward girl, whom he was losing in that bitter hour, to see him ascend the heights?

When it was over, he rose, a man where he had been a boy, and retraced his steps to camp. The sun appeared to burn a hole through his hat. He found Crawford asleep, or at least he lay with closed eyes, a tranquility new to his face transforming it. Al had the first instance of his reward, outside of his conscience.

That very day the hot weather Crawford had predicted set in with a vengeance. Al, awaking out of a torpid slumber, sweltered in his wet clothes. And Al began his watchful vigil. That day dispelled any hope, if one had really existed, of his old friend recovering. Crawford drank water often, but he wanted no more food. Al himself found hunger mitigating.

"Al," said Crawford, breaking his silence at sunset, "you're stuck here ... till the rains come again."

"Looks like it, old-timer," replied Al cheerfully. "Perhaps that's just as well. Don't you worry."

"¿Quién sabe?" replied the prospector, as if he pierced the veil of the future.

At night they conversed more freely, as the effort cost less, but neither again mentioned gold nor Ruby Low. The oppression of heat was on their minds. Crawford had before given stock of his desert wisdom, but he repeated it. Where he had been violently solicitous for Al to go, now he advised against it.

The days passed, wonderful in spite of their terror. And the nights were a relief from them. Al did not leave the old prospector's side except when absolutely necessary. And as Jim imperceptibly faded away, Al made these times more and more infrequent.

One afternoon upon awakening late, Al became at once aware of a change in the sky. Clouds were rare in this section during the hot dry season, yet the sky appeared obscured by pale, green-yellow, mushrooming clouds through which the sun burned a fierce magenta hue.

Al rubbed his eyes, and watched, as had become his habit. A hard hot wind that had blown like a blast from a furnace earlier in the day had gone down with the sinking sun. The yellow, rolling canopy was dust and the green tinge a reflection cast by desert foliage.

"What you make of that sky, old-timer?" asked Al, turning to his companion. But Crawford, who was usually awake at this hour and gazing through the wide opening to the desert, did not make any response. Al bent quickly, as had become his wont lately, to scrutinize the mask-like face.

Getting up, Al set about his few tasks. But the lure of the sky made him desist from camp work and set him out to drive up the burros.

Meanwhile, the singular atmospheric conditions had augmented. The sun, now duskily gold, set behind Three Round Hills. And the canopy of dust, or whatever it was, had begun to lift, so that it left a band of clear dark air along the desert floor, a transparent medium like that visible after a flash of lightning.

The phenomenon was so marvelous and new that Al suffered a break in his idle attention. This stirred his consciousness to awe and conjecture as had no other desert aspect he had watched. Presently he thought to ask the old prospector what caused it and what it signified. To this end he hurried back to camp.

Crawford leaned far forward from his bed, his spare frame strung like a whipcord, his long lean bare arm outstretched. He pointed to the west with quivering hand.

Al wheeled in consternation, and he called in alarm: "Hold on, old- timer."

"Look!" cried Crawford exultantly.

"What do you see, Jim?"

"Amber's mirage!"

Al flashed his gaze from the prospector's transfigured countenance out across the desert to see weird rock and grotesque cacti exquisitely magnified in the trailing veil of luminous gold.

"Jim, it's only the afterglow of sunset," cried Al, as if to try to convince himself.

The old prospector had fallen back on the bed. Al rushed to kneel beside him.

"Oh, God! He's dead! An' I'm left alone!"

Al crouched there a moment, stricken by anguish. To be prepared for calamity was not enduring it. The sudden sense of his terrific loneliness beat him down like a mace. Presently when the salt blindness passed from his sight, he observed that Jim had died with his eyes wide open.

He closed Jim's eyelids, to have them fly open again. Al essayed a gentle force, with like result. Horrified, he shut the pale lids down hard. But they popped up.

"Aw!" he exclaimed, breathing hard.

Al had never seen a dead man, much less a beloved friend, who even in death persisted in a ghastly counterfeit of life. Suddenly Al saw strange shadows in the staring eyes. He bent lower. Did he imagine a perfect reflection of the luminous golden effulgence in the sky, with its drifting magnifying veil? Or were there really images there? He wiped the dimness from his own sight. He was like a man whom shock had gravely afflicted. There was something stamped in Jim's eyes. Perhaps the mirage engraved upon his soul? Or the sensitive iris mirroring, in its last functioning moment, the golden glow of a rare sunset. Al trembled in his uncertainty.

Then he recalled the story of Amber's mirage. And he sustained another shock. According to Jim the miner Amber had died raving about a mirage of gold, with wide-open eyes in which flamed a proof of his illusion and which would not stay shut.

"It's only the mind," muttered Al. A monstrous trick of the imagination, natural to those mad prospectors, a lie as false as any mirage itself. But there shone that beautiful light in Crawford's sightless eyes. And the sky had shaded over. The gold had vanished. The mysterious veil might never have transformed the desert. Al covered the old prospector's face with a blanket.

That night Al Shade kept reverent vigil beside the body of his departed friend. The desert seemed a sepulcher.

With the retreat of the somber shadows came a necessity for practical tasks. He ate a meager breakfast. Then he wrapped Jim in his blankets and tarpaulin, and bound them securely. Whereupon he stalked forth to find a grave.

It would never do to bury Jim in the sand. Of all the desert mediums, sand was the most treacherous. It would blow away, and so he hunted for a niche in the rocks. He found many, some too large and others too small. At last under a cliff he had overlooked he discovered a deep depression, clean and dry, as fine a last resting place as any man could desire. And it would be sweet to the old prospector. It was sheltered from rain and flying sand, yet it looked out upon the desert. If properly filled and sealed it would last there as long as the rocks.

He carried Jim—now how light a burden!—and tenderly deposited him in the hole. Then Al tried to remember a prayer, but as he could not, he made one up.

"To the rocks you loved, old-timer. May God save your soul."

It was going to take considerable time to fill that deep grave. Small stones, such as he could lift, were remarkably scarce, considering it was a region of stone. It would be necessary to fill the grave full or the scavengers of the desert would dig out poor Jim and strew his bones over the sands.

Al went farther afield in search of rocks. Now he would gather a sack of small ones, and then he would stagger back under burden of a heavy one. He performed Herculean labors.

The time came when his task was almost done. Only a few more heavy stones. But where to find them? He had sacked the desert of it loose fragments.

While allaying his thirst at the stream he espied the dull yellow gleam of a rock out in a little pool, rather deep.

Al waded out to secure it. His feet sank in the sand, and, as the water was knee-deep, he had to bend to get the stone. It lifted easily enough, until he heaved it out of the water. Then it felt like lead. All this toil in the hot sun had weakened him or else the stone, which was not large, had exceeding weight; in fact, it was so burdensome that Al floundered with it and at the shore would have fallen if he had not let it drop.

Bare flat rock edged on the stream there, and Al's stone, as it struck, gave forth a curious ring. He gave it a kick with his wet boot, shaking off some of the sand that adhered to it. Dull yellow and white stripes appeared on this queer-looking stone Al had carried out of the stream.

Then he scraped his hob-nailed boot hard on the surface. Bright thread caught the sunlight. Frantically he crawled into the stream and grasped up handfuls of wet sand. He spread them to the sun, gazed with piercing eyes. Specks of gold! They were as many as the grains of sand. Al tore up the bank, his fists tight on his precious discovery.

"Jim! Jim!" he shouted, panting with rapture. "Look a-here! A strike! An' old Three Rounded Hills... is her name!" He got no response to his wild outcry. "Jim!"

Silence and loneliness emanated from the camp. They struck at Al's heart with reality. An empty space marked where Jim's bed had lain in the shade.

A second Christmas had come and far gone when Al Shade set foot in Pine again. It was the last of winter and fine weather for that high country. It was an unusual circumstance for Pine not to have a white winter. The mountain tops were shining, snowy domes, and that pure smooth white extended far down into the timber, but it had not yet encroached upon the lower slopes. A bracing cold wind blew out of the west, whipping dust down the main street of Pine.

The weekly stage had but few passengers that day, and Al was one of them. He wore a new suit and overcoat, and he carried a small satchel. His lean, clean-shaven face was almost as dark as an Indian's. He got out to button his coat and turn up the collar. An icy breath of winter struck through him, coincident with a recurrent and thrilling, yet poignant, emotion that had beset him at times on the long journey up from Yuma.

The hour was still a little short of noonday. Al's first act was to hurry into the bank. He approached the teller's window.

"Hardwick, do you remember me?" he asked.

"Can't say I do," replied the teller, after a close scrutiny. "But your face seems familiar."

"I'm Al Shade. You used to cash my check Saturdays, when I worked for the lumber mill."

"Al Shade? Now I know you. But you've changed... grown into a man. Say, didn't you leave Pine with an old prospector a couple of years ago?"

"Yes, but it isn't actually that long," replied Al.

"You were reported lost in the desert."

"It was true enough. But I got out. Hardwick, I want to deposit considerable money."

"Glad to hear it," returned the teller heartily. "Come right into Mister Babbitt's office."

Babbitt did not recall Al, or the circumstance of his departure from Pine.

"Mister Babbitt, just lately I drove two burros into Yuma, packed with gold. I made the exchange there at the assay office, and I have the money with me to deposit."

Al emptied the contents of the satchel on the desk before the bank officials and then he stripped from his waist a thick belt, stuffed all around with greenbacks.

"I'm sure glad to get rid of this," he said. "Count it an' give me a bankbook."

"There's a fortune, young man!" the banker exclaimed, his eyes alight. "I congratulate you. You must have made a rich strike."

"It's little enough for what I went through," Al returned coolly.

"You want this to your credit alone?"

"Yes. My partner, Jim Crawford, died. He is buried on the desert."

"Too bad. I remember the old fellow. Shade, you look as if you'd earned this money. I hope you use it wisely."

"Reckon I will," replied Al, with richer note in his voice. "I promised someone I'd fetch back a bucket of gold."

Al left the bank relieved that this necessary precaution had been fulfilled. For many months the possession of gold, and then for days its equivalent in cash, had been a nuisance and a dread. Soon he would need to consider the possession of much gold—Ruby's. The moment was at hand. No word had he heard of her, of mother, of friends. He felt a total stranger in his hometown. His absence seemed to have been endless. He judged what might have happened to them by the age he had been away, and the tragedy that had chained him to the desert. Yet a fugitive hope always had hung to the fringe of his consciousness. And now it beat at him with tremendous hammer strokes.

All at once he heard the hum of the saw at the lumber mill. It cut into him as if it had actually been at his heart. He saw the blue and yellow smoke rising from the huge stack. He passed on, still some distance from the mill, and turned off the main street into the outskirts of town. Nothing had changed. The boardwalk appeared identically as when he had last trod it that fateful Sunday. Soon he passed by the last several cottages and came to the blacksmith's shop. Ben Wiley, the smith, was busy at his forge. The red sparks flew, and the ring of iron came on the cold air.

Al strode on, past the Mexican gardens, out into the country, to the edge of the pines. The white cone-shaped peak pierced the sky. It looked winter up there, and he had a momentary longing for the hot dry desert.

Then he espied the gray cabin where Ruby lived and beyond it the old shack where Jim Crawford had stayed when he was in from a prospecting trip. Al wondered if he had expected these habitations to be gone.

Blue smoke curled up from the cabin chimney. And, as of old, a saddled horse stood hitched on the porch side. It, as well as the rich trappings on saddle and bridle, gave Al a queer familiar pang. He strode up on the porch noisily, hurriedly, as if to give himself courage. Boldly he knocked. But his knees were shaking.

The door opened to disclose a woman. She had the face, the flaming hair of the girl pictured in Al's mind.

"Al!" she screamed in amazed delight, and rushed out. "Alive? We heard you were dead."

"Ruby!" Al cried, his voice hushed. Certain it was that his arms spread wide to envelop her.

"You desert wanderer!" she exclaimed. "How you've grown... changed!"

Al laughed with a happy wildness and was about to kiss her when out of the tail of his eye he espied a figure standing in the open doorway. Releasing Ruby, he faced around squarely, confusion added to his rapture.

A sneering man, fastidiously attired in fancy rider's apparel, stood there, with something familiar about him that stung Al.

"Howdy, Shade. I see your hunt for gold hasn't improved your manners," he said mockingly. "But maybe you didn't know you were hugging a married woman."

"Joe Raston!" Al burst out in an agony of recognition.

"Sure... the same," replied Raston, his white teeth gleaming. He had the same red face, the same hard blue eyes, with dark puffs under them. His attire now smacked of the city dandy, instead of the cowboy.

Al wheeled to Ruby. "Is it true... you... you're... ?" he queried hoarsely, breaking off.

"Yes, but..."

Raston stepped down off the threshold, almost between them.

"Married, with a girl baby," Raston interrupted. "Another red- headed girl to make trouble..."

"Hush up, Joe. Let me tell him," Ruby cried, recovering from glad surprise to anger.

"My... God," choked Al, with horrified stare. Then he turned and ran.

"Wait, Al... !" Ruby screamed after him.

But Al ran on, blindly at first, down the clattering boardwalk, and almost into town before he could check his mad flight. Out of breath he slowed down near Ben Wiley's blacksmith shop. Terror at the thought of being a subject for town gossip and ridicule drove him to swallow his conflicting emotions. What an awful blunder he had made. But had he not expected that very thing? He should have asked questions, have learned something before calling upon Ruby. That sneering devil Raston! Ruby married—a baby girl! Al fought off a deathly sickness, and in sheer desperation turned in to the blacksmith's shop.

"Howdy, Ben," he said, confronting the burly, grizzled giant, who let his hammer fall.

"Jumpin' jack rabbits! It ain't you, Al?" boomed Wiley.

"Sure is, Ben. How are you?"

"Son-of-a-gun, if it ain't Al! Wal, by gum! I am glad to see you," replied the blacksmith, and it was well Al possessed a horny, tough hand. "So that story of you bein' daid on the desert ain't so. You're a healthy-lookin' ghost. An' shore you're a prosperous- lookin' gent."

"Ben, I struck it rich. Jim Crawford took me down into Sonora. We got lost. Jim died, an' afterward I struck gold."

"You don't say! Thet's staggerin' news. Sorry old Jim cashed. He was the salt of the earth."

"Indeed, he was. Ben, I've been down the... road," Al said haltingly. "But not home... yet. How's my mother?"

"Say, Al, haven't you heerd nothin' all this time?" queried Wiley with concern.

"Not a word."

"Wal, thet's tough. To come home with a stake an' find... all changed."

"Ben, I didn't expect anythin' else. Tell me."

"Wal, Al, it's no long story, anyway. After you left, Raston took the farm away from your mother. Mortgage come into his hands through a deal an' ..."

"Raston? You mean the cattleman who took over the Bar X an' some of the valley ranches? Not Joe Raston?"

"Joe's father. Thet's the man. Left everythin' to Joe. He's been playin' high jinks here, Al. Owns the lumber mill now an' Halford's store. But nobody has any use for him."

"Go on about... Mother," Al returned, fortifying himself.

"Wal, she went to Colorado an'... an' died there. Let's see. Must have been in the summer. My wife will know. She read about it in the paper. An' this is the first you've heahed about it, Al?"

"Yes. But I've been afraid," Al replied huskily as he turned away his face.

"It's hard, Al. I'm shore sorry I had to be the one to break it. I reckon you better come to see my wife. She was friendly with your mother."

"Thanks, I will, Ben. An' Ben, can you tell me anythin' about my girl, Ruby Low?"

"That red-head? Wal, I'll be dog-goned! You're in for more bad news, Al."

"Uhn-huh. Come out with it, then."

"Ruby's married."

"Married? Joe Raston?"

"Haw! Haw! Why, Joe Raston wouldn't 'a' married Ruby, as everybody knows. Joe is the high-flier 'round town now. Father left him all his interests."

"But Ben!" Al ejaculated, aghast. "I thought Ruby... it must be Joe Raston."

"Wal, like some other folks, an' Ruby herself... so they say... you figgered wrong. Joe jilted Ruby cold. It went so hard with her thet she up an' married Luke Boyce."

"Luke! Why, he and I went to school together. Luke Boyce! He was a pretty nice boy, if I remember. Younger than me. So it's Luke. An' not Raston."

"Luke's not a bad sort. Used to work for me heah. Things have gone ag'in' him, an' thet's no joke. He was ridin' for the Bar X, an' broke a leg. Raston fired him. After he was able to be about again, he worked heah an' there, at odd jobs. But when winter set in, he was thrown out of work. An' he's hangin' too much around the saloons."

"How long has he been married?"

"'Most a year. Ruby has a baby."

"Things happen... even in a short year," Al rejoined ponderingly. "Well, Ben, good day. Remember me to Missus Wiley. I'll come over some night."

"Do, Al. We'll be plumb glad to see you. An' Ma can tell you all the news."

Returning to town, Al went to the hotel and engaged a room with a fireplace, before which he huddled the rest of the day. When darkness came, he had parted with his mother and the sweet part of the past in which she had figured.

Al had never been given to drink. But now an urge to seek oblivion almost overcame him. It was memory of old Jim Crawford that gave him the final strength to abstain. The sooner he faced the whole fact of his calamity, the sooner he might consider how to meet it. He sensed a vague monstrous obstacle between him and the future. He went out to meet it.

It was in one of the side-street saloons that Al finally encountered Luke Boyce. The recognition was instantaneous on Al's part, but Boyce at first glance failed to see in Al an old schoolmate.

"Howdy, Luke, don't you know me?"

"I don't, but I'll bet you're Al Shade. Everybody's talkin' about you."

They shook hands. Boyce's surprise and pleasure were short-lived, owing, no doubt, to shame at his condition and embarrassment before Ruby Low's old fiancé. Boyce looked like a cowboy long out of a job and verging on the condition of a tramp. He tried to pass off the meeting with a lame remark and to return to his game of pool on the dingy table. But Al would have none of that. "Come on, Luke, let's get out of here. I'm sure glad to meet you, an' I want to talk."

Boyce was not proof against such warmth. He left the saloon with Al, and by the time they arrived at the hotel his constraint had disappeared.

"I reckon you want to talk about Ruby," Boyce queried bluntly.

"Why sure, Luke, but not particular, an' there's no hurry," replied Al frankly. "Naturally I want to hear how things are... with my old girl. I want to know a lot else, too."

Boyce laid aside his hat and turned back the collar of his thin coat, and held lean blue hands to the fire. "Let's get it over then," he said with the same bluntness, but devoid of resentment. "I didn't double-cross you with Ruby."

"That never entered my mind, Luke," Al rejoined hastily.

"I was always sweet on Ruby, as you know," went on Boyce. "But I never had a look-in while you an' other fellows were around. When you went away, Ruby quit the boys for a while."

"What?"

"I didn't know it then, Al, but she told me later. After I married her. Ruby didn't go around with anyone for half a year, I guess. You promised you'd be back that Christmas, she said... an' she was true to you. But when rumors drifted up from Yuma that you'd been lost on the desert, she took up with Joe Raston again. It didn't last long. Only a few months. Joe wasn't the marryin' kind. He gave Ruby a dirty deal... jilted her. That took the starch out of Ruby. I married her in spite of the fact she swore she didn't and couldn't love me. But I loved her. We got along fine, while I was earnin' money. Ruby likes pretty clothes. She was gettin' fond of me. Once she said she liked me better than any beau she ever had, except you. Well, I broke my leg, an' that started us downhill. Joe Raston had me fired. I got well again, but nobody would believe I could ride. An' I had to take odd jobs anywhere. Lately I've been out of work. Then Ruby had a baby, and now I reckon she hates the sight of me. We're poor as dormice. I've borrowed until my old friends dodge a corner when they see me. An' if somethin' doesn't show up this spring, I'll sure lose Ruby an' the baby."

"Somethin' will turn up, Luke," rejoined Al confidently. "Things are never so bad as they seem. Maybe I can help you. Spring will be here before long, an' that's the time to get a job or start somethin'. ¿Quién sabe? Your luck may change. You might even see Amber's mirage."

"Al, you don't 'pear to have been drinkin'," Boyce said bluntly. "But your talk is plumb good. Sounds like music to me. An' what's Amber's mirage?"

"I never quite satisfied myself about that," Al replied seriously. "Old Jim Crawford used to talk as if Amber's mirage was more than fortune to a man. I took it to be a real mirage or somethin' he imagined. Somethin' close to love an' death... somethin' that proved the passion for gold was terrible an' selfish... a waste of life, unless the strivin' was for some noble purpose. Anyway, just before Jim died, he saw the mirage. Or he was out of his head an' thought so. But he didn't seem crazy. He looked like the great poet I read about... who just before dyin' sat up with wonderful eyes an' said... 'More light!' Jim's end was like that."

"Wal!" ejaculated Boyce, deeply stirred. "It shore must have been somethin'. Al, I'll try once more, an' if I can't make a go of it, an' get Ruby back, I'll leave Pine. I've stood a heap, but I couldn't stand to see Raston get Ruby."

"Uhn-huh. So he's after her now... since you're married?"

"Sure is. Ruby went back to her mother, an' Raston goes there. Ruby admitted it. But she doesn't trust him."

"Luke, it strikes me you ought to stop Raston."

"How? He's powerful here in Pine. Runs everythin'. If I thrash him, I'll get thrown into jail, where I haven't been yet. What can I do?"

"I'll say a word to him," said Al.

"Shade, am I to understand you... you want to be my friend?" Boyce asked incredulously.

"I reckon. What else? But keep your mouth shut about it."

"I think it fine of you," burst out Boyce.

"I've seen Ruby... out at her old home. Raston was there. I... like a jackass... thought he was her husband. But, Luke, I'll stand by you, as you stood by Ruby, an' it's not too late to save her."

Boyce leaped up, radiant, but he could not speak.

"Shake on that. There," added Al.

"Let me get this straight," gasped Boyce.

"Are you in debt?" Al went on imperturbably.

"Yes, an' pretty deep. It was a quarrel over debt that made Ruby leave me. She would run bills, an' I couldn't pay. I tell you, Al, if it wasn't for my hard luck, Ruby would turn out all right."

"How deep are in you in debt, Luke?"

"Somethin' over two hundred," replied Boyce abjectly.

Al laughed. He had long been apart from the struggles and miseries of men. He had no idea of values. He had seen a million dollars in gold in the bed of a stream!

"Come in to see me tomorrow mornin'," Al said. "I want to... to lend you the money to pay those debts."

Long after the bewildered Boyce had left, Al sat there watching the fire through dimmed eyes. Then he went out to look for Raston.

The street, the saloons failed to disclose him, but the lobby of the hotel ended his search.

"Raston, I've been lookin' for you," Al said deliberately.

"Yes? About the little joke I had on you?" queried the other maliciously.

"You had no joke on me. My old friend, Luke Boyce, told me you were tryin' to ruin his wife."

"That's his business, not yours," snapped Raston.

"Well, I'm sort of footloose, an' I can make most anythin' my business," went on Al, stepping closer.

"Sure. And now you'll cut me out. You're welcome to the red-head flirt. She'll be easy for you, now you're lousy with gold. I told her so and reminded her..."

Al struck out with all the might of unspent misery and wrath. The blow laid Raston his length upon the lobby floor.

"Hold on," Raston called out.

"Get up, you dog!"

Raston rose shakily, not very much the spectacle of a man. His hand went to a bleeding and puffing lip. "Shade, I had some right to say what I did," he began hurriedly, backing away. Yet he appeared resentful, as if he had been wronged. "I couldn't get Ruby, by hook or crook. She always flirted and let me spend my money on her. But no more. And lately, when I lost patience, she swore there'd never been but one man who could make her disloyal to Boyce. And that man was dead. She meant you, Al Shade."

That staggered Al to an abrupt abandonment of the encounter.

"Raston, you leave Ruby alone now," Al returned passionately, and went his way.

It was afternoon of the next day, somber and still, with storm out in the foothills.

Al, running down the road to catch up with his burros, did not look back, as once he had looked to wave good bye to Ruby. He had just knocked loudly on the cabin door, thrilling in his cold, sick heart to Ruby's voice: "Come in." But he had needed only the assurance of her presence. Then he had set down a heavy bucket before the door. Ruby's bucketful of gold that he had promised to fetch her from the desert. It was heavier by far than any bucketful of water she had ever lugged so complainingly from the spring. Like a horse freed from a burden he had sped down the road.

A cry pierced his ears—and, as he ran on—again, but fainter. Still he ran, soon crowding his pair of lightly packed burros. As a criminal in flight or a coward at the end of his tether he ran until he turned the bend in the road. Then he strode on, the panting from his breast like hard sobs. Free! The gray hills, the yellow road, the blue haze of desert far on proclaimed it.

Free from that vise-clamp around his heart! The gates of locked, unnatural calm burst at last. It was not so much that he had held in his passion, but that it had been only forming, mounting, damming. He had brooded, planned, talked, while this unknown and terrible choice had taken possession of him.

A storm mourned down from the shrouded peaks and enveloped Al, so black, so furious, that he had to walk beside his burros to keep from losing them.

Al lifted his face to the elements. There was an anguished ecstasy in this kindred spirit, this enveloping and protective storm. It was his gratitude for the return to loneliness. He had escaped from four walls, from streets and houses, from people, from eyes, eyes, eyes—curious, pitying, wondering, ridiculing, hateful eyes that knew his story, yet would never understand. But he was pursued still, down the naked shingle of this winding road, by the tortures he had invited, by the pangs of relinquished love, by the glory of something too great for him to bear.

As he descended toward the desert, he gradually drew out of the storm. Gray space, with a light shining low-down to the west, confronted him. Then Cedar Tanks and night halted him. Habit was stronger than nature. Mechanically he performed the first camp tasks, then sat on a stone, peering into the mocking golden heart of the fire, then crawled like a dog under the cedars, beaten and crushed. Half the night a desert wind wailed the requiem of boyish dreams; half the night he slept. And the dawn broke cold, still, gray.

Al packed and took to the road.

Blackstone, Green Water, Dry Camp, Greasewood—day by day they were reached and passed. Coyote Wells, Papago Springs, Mesquite, and then at last Bitter Seeps, where the seldom-trodden trail headed off the road toward Pinacate.

Bitter Seeps marked another change—the rebellion of physical nature against the havoc of grief. Al Shade lifted his head. There was a ring in his call to his burros. He faced the desert and saw it with clearing eyes. He was entering the empire of the sun. And the desert was abloom with blossoms and sweet with dry wild fragrance.

Slowly the scales of mortal strife fell from Al Shade's eyes. And there came a regurgitation of the dominance of the senses. Far, far behind lay Pine and the past.

Four days' travel brought him to the slope of Pinacate.

Next morning he climbed the black slope to the point where Jim Crawford had made his observation that fatal day long ago. The morning was clear. The heat haze had not come to obscure the wondrous and appalling panorama. Below to the west, seemingly close, lay the blue Gulf, calm and grand, and across it loomed San Pedro del Martir, dim and purple against the sky. But it was the south that held Al Shade's gaze.

The wild desert, like a vivid mosaic, stretched its many leagues of jagged lava and colored cacti and red stone, down to where three round hills, pale in outline, infinitely strange, appeared to mark its limits.

Only the hard bitter life of that wasteland, only the torment of its heat and thirst, the perils of its labyrinthine confines, only such loneliness and solitude and desolation and death as were manifested there could have brought an exultant, welcoming cry from Al Shade's lips. He would keep lonely vigil by Jim Crawford's grave. He descended to camp, found and packed his burros, and with a trenchant call he drove them south.

There was peace in the desert. The pervading stillness engendered rest in him. He would have liked to dispense with spiritual consciousness, as he had with memory. But it took time for the desert to perform miracles.

At noon he halted to rest the burros in the shade of an ironwood tree on the edge of an elevation. The desert dropped away here. When he gazed out on a level, he encountered sky and mushrooming thunderclouds that were rising above a distant range. It was drowsily warm, and he fell asleep, leaning against the tree. He dreamed of his old friend Jim, and the spell lingered on into his awakening.

Al rubbed his eyes. He could not have slept until approach of sunset, for the sun stood at its zenith. But there appeared to be a clear, dark amber glamour over sand and bush, rock and cactus. Then he gazed straight out from the elevation.

The southern sky had become transfigured by mountains of golden mushrooming clouds. They moved almost imperceptibly, rising, spreading, unfolding. Then they changed until they were no longer clouds. A sharp level line cut across the floor of this golden mass, and under it shone the clear, dark amber desert, weird only in that it had color at noonday.

Above it glimmered a long blue ripple of gentle waves, lapping the line, overcast by golden tinge. Foliage faintly of the same hue bordered shoreline far into the dim verge. And the broad water spread to the marble steps and balustrades and terraces and doors and golden walls of a magnificent city. Empty streets led upward into halls of pearl and chambers of opal and courts of porphyry, all burned through with lucent gold. A lonely city of shining amber! Tiers of walls rose one above the other, towering with a thousand pillared arches and trellises and sculptured images of lifeless gods and wingless eagles, with niche on niche, and window on window of shimmering treasure, all rising to flaming turrets that perished against the pitiless truthful sky.

A mellow drowsy hum of insects seemed to float murmuringly to Al on the dry air. The tinkle of a burro bell further emphasized the silence. Dark veils of heat, like crinkled transparent lace, rose from sand and stone.

Had he really seen the mirage or was that shining city in the clouds the mansion to which the souls of men must climb?