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 He sprang to his feet, his long, gaunt hands reaching for the
deputy’s throat. Arnold swept him back with one motion of his
powerful arm.
“Don’t you do anything like that,” he said, with rough kindness.
“You’d be just a skeeter if I took hold of you, and I don’t want to.
Suffering snakes!” he pleaded, “Don’t look like that! I’m sorry, man;
by Heaven, I’ve hated this job like blue poison, ever since I laid eyes
on you.”
The words died away in his throat before the dumb misery in the
other man’s face. The wasted figure was slumped forward in an
abandon of despair. All the man’s pride and courage died in the face
of his fearful disappointment.
“Oh, God! Oh, God!” he moaned. “And I thought I was going to die
in the open.”
He turned to the deputy, a sudden hope lighting his woe.
“Let me get out,” he begged. “Let me get out right here. I can’t get
anywheres: I’m bound to die; but it’ll be out in the open. Please let
me out.”
“I can’t.” The words came through Arnold’s set teeth.
“Why not? I never killed Dan Lundy. Before God, I never laid a
finger on him.” Barker spoke fast and thick, in his eagerness.
“I went to his shack and found him there, knifed to death. And Jim
Texas swore he saw me do it. Swore it, mind you; when Hart Dowling
and I both knew Texas had threatened Lundy time and again.”
A fit of coughing interrupted him, but he went on as soon as he
could, his hoarse voice breaking now and then.
“And Westcott came sneaking ’round to see what there was in it for
him. He was just starting in then, and I’d heard he was a smart
fellow. I told him of the fifteen hundred dollars dust I had hid in my
shack. He was to find Dowling. Dowling ’d gone up into Wyoming.
Westcott was to get him down here as a witness. And the damned
coyote was to have my fifteen hundred.”
Again the racking cough, and his voice trailed off in a choking
struggle for breath. He was shrieking when he continued.
“And Westcott took the money! Took it out of my shack, and never
came near me again. Left me to die. They’d ha’ hung me, sure, if
some of the jury hadn’t believed Jim Texas lied.”
The deputy’s face was twisted with pity and shame; the man was so
horribly broken.
“They’s a flask in the pocket o’ that coat,” he said. “Take a pull; it’ll
brace you up.”
“I don’t want it,” Barker snarled. “It chokes me more.”
He had drawn the coat about him, the sleeves tied across his chest.
“And Westcott went back on me this time, too.” He took up the
pitiful tale again. “He couldn’t be satisfied, the devil, with what he’d
done. He had to do it over. But what for? What for? I say? I never did
him dirt.”
The deputy gave a start of surprise.
“Why Westcott got—” he began, then pity kept him silent. If Barker
had not guessed he would not tell him.
“Westcott ... hell!” He spat savagely out upon the desert, shaking
his head with pity, as he glanced again at the huddled figure.
“Westcott’s a damned side-winder,” he muttered.
They were descending into an arroyo, once the bed of a creek; dry,
now, for more than a year. The road crossed it, here.
“We’re going to get our weather, quick,” the deputy said, as he
noticed that the bottom of the arroyo held tiny pools of water.
Even as he spoke a little stream came trickling down.
“It’s us for the level! Quick!” he shouted, urging the bay.
In an instant darkness was upon them. A sudden flash of steely
blue rent the sky; almost with it a quick roll of thunder was all about
them and a bellowing rush of water came tearing along the arroyo.
The bay colt squealed with terror, plunging sidewise, heedless of
whip and voice. The deputy tried to turn him back to where the bank
sloped, but already they were sweeping along with the torrent.
“A cloudburst,” Arnold shrieked, and with the words he was
wrested from his seat.
The shafts of the light vehicle snapped short at the gear. The colt,
plunging, open-mouthed, was hurled forward in a fearful somersault,
and went under, just as the wagon and its remaining occupant rolled
over and over, as a boulder might roll, in the churn of maddened
water.

It was far into the night when, amid a matted drift, half-way up
one bank of the arroyo, something stirred, faintly. Caught in a web of
debris, and a tangle of mesquite roots that thrust far out from the
soil, a man strove feebly to disentangle his head from a smother of
something that enwrapped it. When at last he partly succeeded he
looked up at the calm stars, lamping the sky in solemn splendor.
Below him he could still hear the rush of water, but above all was
peaceful.
Long he lay, more dead than alive, trying to remember what had
happened. By the bright starlight he managed to make out that the
body of the light wagon had caught upon an out-thrust web of
mesquite roots. He was lying on his side in the wagon box, one arm
thrust, to the shoulder, through something that he could not see.
About his neck and head was a tangle of cloth which he made out to
be the deputy’s coat, and a long thong of leather, probably one of the
harness reins. This was wound, as well, about what remained of one
of the seat braces.
Slowly, by agonizing degrees, the man began to work himself loose
from the tangle. Then he discovered that the thing binding his
shoulder was the strap of a horse’s nose-bag, and the bag itself. It
was caught over a long, splintered fragment of the reach, which had
broken through the bottom of the wagon box. The bag seemed to be
about half full of oats.
Inch by inch he cleared himself, and laying hold upon the mesquite
roots, rose slowly, until he stood up. Every movement was pain, but
he persisted doggedly, climbing little by little up the bank, clinging
now to a root of mesquite, now to a point of rock, pausing for breath,
or to ease the strain upon his tortured muscles. At last he grasped the
trunk of a mesquite and dragged himself out upon the desert, where
he fell helpless upon the sand.
 CHAPTER III

The shadowy bulk of distant mountains changed to pale blue as the

purple of night slowly lightened. The stars faded, one by one, and a
spectral moon slipped wearily down the sky. Beyond the scant
mesquite fringing the arroyo the desert lay still and gray, like a
leaden sea.
The man woke, and moved slightly, groaning as his wrenched and
stiffened body protested. Consciousness strengthened, and he
struggled to his knees to stare about him. The chill of early morning
had him by the bones, and he shook in its grip. After a little he got to
his feet and tried, painfully, to swing his arms.
Away westward a subtle hint of color crept across the pale sky,
heralding a coming radiance in the east; but it brought no sense of
comfort.
“There’s no one left alive but me,” the man whispered, as his gaze
took in the awful solitude. “No one but me, Gabriel Gard!”
The sound of that name, spoken all unconsciously, made him start,
and look furtively about. The loneliness of the plain had betrayed his
jealously guarded secret. Then his mood changed.
“I’ve a right to die with it, at least,” he muttered. “They can’t steal
that from me. Barker’s dead, already. Gabriel Gard goes next. Hear
that, Gabriel? You go next. Y-a-a-h.... God!”
A sudden agony of pain shook him as he began to cough. Every
muscle in his body was sore. Then, as the racking grew less, he stood
transfixed, staring across the desert.
A crimson glow from the coming sunrise flushed far across the
eastern sky, and coming toward him, touched by its glory, was a
figure that his astonished brain sought to define.
It was no mirage. He knew the marks of that supreme cheat of the
desert. This was no trick of refraction or of reflection. He saw, as a
man sees, this creature silently, steadily drawing near.
It was a strangely familiar shape; vague, uncouth, incredible, it
seemed; yet he recognized it. He recognized the slender, shuffling
legs, the swinging gait, the mis-shapen body, the ungainly, crooked
neck and high held head; but why, in the name of reason, should a
camel be coming to him, out of nowhere?
Nearer and nearer the creature drew, the uncouth form now a
wonder of azure and crimson, as the light became stronger, and still
the man gazed, his bewildered mind refusing to accept the testimony
of his eyes.
He was filled with awe. It was true, then, what old prospectors had
lately declared, that this solitary wanderer was still in the desert, sole
survivor of the old Jeff Davis caravan.[1] Old man Dickson, and again
young Bennett, swore they had seen it. Dickson told, indeed, of
having had the creature about his camp for nearly a week.
1. When Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War he imported a caravan of camels
into the desert, to carry supplies for the army. The creatures stampeded the army
mules, whenever they appeared, and the soldiers took to shooting them, on the sly.
In time so many were killed that not enough remained to form a caravan, so the
survivors were turned loose in the desert. Here they were hunted by tourists, who
shot them for “sport,” until it was supposed that all had perished. It is known now,
however, that one, at least, survives. This solitary one still wanders about the
desert, and the writer knows of more than one prospector who has encountered it,
very recently.
On came the camel, looking neither to the right nor the left, its
shuffling stride getting it over the ground with curious swiftness.
When it was very near it stopped, under the mesquites, and seemed
to wait for the man to approach. Recovered somewhat from his
amazement, Gabriel Gard drew nearer and, reaching out a tentative
hand, touched the creature’s neck.
The animal neither started nor flinched, but began cropping beans
from the mesquite trees, quite as if the man were not there. Gard,
noting the action, became aware that he was himself faint with
hunger.
On the desert, where he had thrown it in rising, lay the deputy’s
coat, and tangled with it Gard found his own canteen. He took this as
a good omen.
“I may need you, yet,” he whispered, as he took it up.
In one pocket of the coat was a nickle watch, made fast by a leather
thong, to a buttonhole. Another contained the deputy’s pipe, some
loose tobacco, and a water-tight box, in which were fourteen
matches. Gard counted them, carefully.
 He turned to the other side-pocket, with but faint hope that the
flask which he had scorned the day before would be in it yet.
It was there, however, and beside it, in a greasy, crushed packet, a
big beef sandwich. The deputy, accustomed to provide against long
rides in the desert, had secured this before leaving the hotel.
The man ate it eagerly, and took a swallow from the flask. The
food, and the fiery liquor, warmed him, and revived his courage.
In the coat’s inner pocket were papers, a worn memorandum book,
an envelop covered with figures, another, longer one, containing a
document. As Gard turned them over a postal-card fell to the desert.
He picked it up. On the back were a picture, and some printing.
The man read the latter through before he realized what the card was
for. It published his escape from jail, and the fact that five hundred
dollars reward was offered for his capture.
Now he remembered the deputy’s unfinished sentence, and knew
why Westcott had betrayed him.
Westcott had got that reward! He had sold him back to death as he
had sold him before. God! Why could he not have had his fingers
upon that lying throat just once? He would have found strength for
the job that needed doing!
He stretched forth his wasted, jail-bleached hands, and regarded
them, snarling. Then he raised them, shaking them at the sky.
“I’ll live to do it yet! Do you hear?” he shrieked, “I say I will live!”
He beat the desert air with his clenched fists.
“God—devil—whatever you are that runs this hellish world, you’ve
got to let me live. I’ll make that infernal side-winder wish he could
hide in hell’s mouth, before I die!”
The torrent of his rage was stemmed by a vicious attack of that
racking cough. It tore his chest, and flecked his lips with blood.
When it was over he lay upon the sand for a long time, sobbing the
dry, anguished sobs of a man’s helpless woe.
The sun, rising above the distant mountains, shone red upon him.
The camel left the mesquite’s thin shade for the warmer light and the
pad of its soft feet aroused Gard. He must not let the creature get
away.
 He rose, painfully, and went to it, considering the brute carefully.
A plan was dawning in his brain. He took the strap that served him
for a belt, and buckled it around the camel’s neck. The animal
followed him, docile as a sheep, when he led it back to the mesquite.
Then he bethought himself of the oats, in the horse’s bag, below.
Going to the edge of the arroyo he could see it in the wreck of the
road-wagon, and he made his way painfully down to it. As he was
clambering back he noticed that the back spring of the light rig still
clung to it by a single bolt. A slight wrench brought it away, and he
secured it, with a vague feeling that it might prove useful.
The full horror of his position was becoming clear to him. He was
alone in the desert, without food or weapons. He put the thought
away, summoning all his faculties for the need of the moment.
The camel was indifferent to the oats, turning from them to the
mesquite, after a tentative investigation. With his belt and the
harness rein, Gard proceeded to fashion a sort of rude hackamore,
which he put over the creature’s head. The great beast, as soon as it
was adjusted, settled itself, as by instinct, in an attitude of waiting,
while Gard proceeded to fill his canteen and to gather quantities of
mesquite beans, bestowing them in the feed bag, and in the pockets
of Arnold’s coat.
He threw the coat across the camel’s back, the buggy-spring and
the bag secured by its knotted sleeves. Then he took the leading strap
in his hand, spoke to the animal, and they moved out upon the
desert.
Gard had no idea in which direction it was best to go, but he
argued that the camel knew the plain, and its fastnesses. For himself,
he had but one thought—to hide, to rest, to gather strength for
vengeance. At that thought he stifled the cough that rose in his
throat.
Once they were started he let the strap hang loose and gradually
fell behind. The camel went forward a few paces in the direction
ahead of them, but feeling no guidance, gradually deflected its course
toward the west. Gard followed every movement eagerly, until
presently they were going forward at a steady pace, as travelers with
a definite aim.
 The sun was well up now, and its beams warmed the man’s chilled,
sore body. The desert was no longer gray, but a glowing yellow. Even
the air was warm-hued, suffusing the landscape with a roseate
loveliness that yet seemed less of life than of death.
Everywhere were the desert growths, travesties of vegetation,
twisted, grotesque, ghostly gray and pale green in hues. A profound
stillness, insistent, oppressive, was upon everything. The yellow
sand, the glowing air, the cloudless dome of the sky, the far-off
mountains, all seemed to soak up sound. The world lay hushed in
fierce, tense quiet, as though waiting the appearance of some savage
portent.
The camel did not hasten. Gard, walking beside it, had a feeling
that the creature was very old. Its eyes were bright, its coat silky and
fine, but deep under the hair’s soft luxuriance the man’s fingers felt
the skin, wrinkled and folded over shrunken muscles.
But there was neither feebleness nor hesitation in the forward
progress of the desert pilot. It moved forward with a sort of
inexorableness, its padded feet making no sound on the hard sand,
its gaze bent steadily ahead, its inscrutable visage wearing ever, a
look of centuries-old scorn for all things made.
They passed a huge bull-snake sunning upon a rock, and here and
there a silent bird flitted to or from its home in some thorn-guarded
cholla. Once a coyote tossed lightly across their vision, a blown gray
feather along the horizon, but no other signs of animal life stirred the
death-like plain.
The sand grew warmer in the sun’s rays, till permeating heat
radiated from it and hung over it everywhere, a palpable,
shimmering mist of lavender and gold, between earth and air. By
mid-forenoon the sun’s rays were oppressive, and they halted in the
shadow of a giant suhuaro.
The camel, when the man released the leading-strap, lowered itself
slowly to rest, doubling down its legs like the shutting of a jack-knife,
and settling upon the sand with the curious, sighing grunt of old age.
Gard, in the meantime, set about the preparation of a meal. He
shelled a handful of tree beans and crushed them between two
stones, mixing them with water from his canteen into a sort of paste,
which he ate. The suhuaro’s fruit was yet hanging upon its great
branches, dried, somewhat, by the autumn sun and wind, but
palatable and nutritious still. Gard found a long pole, once part of the
frame of another giant cactus, and with this succeeded in knocking
down some of the fig-like growths.
When he had eaten them he stretched himself upon the sand, filled
the deputy’s pipe, and lighted it with one of the precious matches.
The unwonted luxury brought him comfort, and ease of mind. He
smoked slowly, making the most of it in delicious relaxation, his
head in the shade, his weary, sick body basking in the heat of desert
and sunlight.
Lying thus there presently spread out before his eyes the sudden
vision of a great, island-dotted sea. The surface of the water dimpled
and sparkled in the sun; the islands shone jewel-like with verdure, an
exquisite suggestion of rich color was over it all.
His eye was not deceived, though his mind half accepted the
vision. He knew that it was a mirage, but he lay for a long time
watching its changing beauty, a half-amused sense of superiority to
illusion ministering pleasantly to his pride. The scene was so very
like what it seemed to be.
Suddenly, from the surface of the sea rose a monstrous thing,
huge, formidable, portentous, and endowed with motion. Gard
turned upon his side, with a gasp. The mystic sea still wavered in the
distance, but the shape was no part of it.
An instant he studied it, then sank back with a sigh of relief. The
apparition, upon scrutiny, had resolved itself into a little wild burro,
perhaps a quarter of a mile away, passing across the face of the
mirage. It was such a germane little shape, this familiar of the desert,
that he was cheered by the sight of it. The next instant he noted a
tarantula, hairy, vicious, glaring at him from a tiny eminence of sand.
Acting upon impulse, Gard hurled at it the rounded stone with
which he had crushed the mesquite beans. The missile struck the
sand close beside the tarantula and the huge spider sprang upon it in
a frenzy of stupid ferocity. The man laughed silently, a laugh not
good to see.
A shadow floated across the plain, and then another. The man
glanced upward, to see three or four great black forms circling
against the blue.
 “You would, eh?” he shrieked, springing to his feet. “Yah! Not yet,
you devils! I’m not dead yet!”
He shook his fist skyward at the huge, waiting birds.
“I’m alive yet!” he yelled. “You don’t get me yet; not till I’ve had my
meat.”
The cough seized him, and ere it let go its hold the disappointed
vultures, with never a stroke of their wide wings, faded into the skyey
depths.
But Gard had no heart to linger further. The sight of the desert
scavengers had shaken him sorely, he hastened to rouse his strange
fellow, and soon the pair were again threading that weary way from
nowhere to the unknown.
All day they had moved steadily mountainward, and now they
began to draw nearer the range that ever since dawn had reared a
jagged line along the horizon. Gard had not known whether they
would reach the mountains that day. One does not predicate
distances in the desert. They may be long, or short; the lying air gives
no clue.
But as the afternoon shadows were turning to mauve and blue,
what had for hours looked like sloping foothills, leading gently
toward further heights, suddenly reared itself before them in a long
stretch of high, perpendicular wall.
Straight toward it the camel went, never pausing or looking around
at the man beside him, and when another forward step would have
found their progress barred, the creature swerved to the left, to enter
a narrow pass that appeared as if by magic in the seemingly
unbroken wall.
Now the way wound upward along a dry wash, climbing almost
imperceptibly, at first, growing steeper, by degrees, though at no
time a sharp ascent. The shadows closed in upon them, and the air
grew chill, but still the camel walked on, and beside him, clinging,
now, in his weakness, to the animal’s long hair, toiled the man.
More and more often he paused for breath, his lungs tortured by
the pace. He was faint with fatigue, chilled by the shadow-cooled air,
but a drink from the flask gave him brief strength, and he struggled
on.
 An hour, and they were well within the mountains. The way wound
now among greasewood and scrub oaks, with only here and there a
cactus. The chaparral drew dense, and Gard could hear birds calling
in its depths.
The trail began to widen, and patches of coarse grasses cropped
out, here and there. The altitude was not particularly great, but it was
beginning to tell upon the man when his strange guide halted in a
little open glade, where the wash ended abruptly.
Night was falling, and Gard could make out very little save that the
forest growth closed in the glade on all sides. Overhead he could just
get a glimpse of the purpling sky, where the stars were already out.
Off at one side he could see these reflected in water, and he could
hear, as well, the gentle splash of a stream.
The camel stood beside him, wearily patient until, lifting a hand,
he removed its load and slipped the hackamore from its head. Freed,
the creature turned away, and presently Gard heard him drinking,
not far off.
He followed the sound until he reached water, and passing beyond
the camel, knelt to drink his fill from a clear, cold fountain.
Later he gathered such dry sticks as he could find and kindled a
fire, as much for protection as for warmth. He was too weary to think
of food, but crouched before the cheering blaze, alternately dozing,
and rousing to feed the flame.
As often as he did the latter he could see, in the darkness beyond
the blaze, the gleaming eyes of small forest-prowlers, come to stare
in wonder at the strange thing by the pool. Nothing molested him,
however, and toward dawn he fell into a profound, restful slumber.
 CHAPTER IV

The morning light did not confirm Gard’s impression that he was in
the deep woods. Beyond the thin region of growth fed by the pool the
little valley into which he had been led lay sandy and cactus-grown,
like the desert. The stream that should have watered it, that had
probably, at some time, made its way down the dry wash which he
had traversed, now found some underground outlet, and was
swallowed up by the vampire plain below.
Above the glade was a steep, rockbound ravine, down which the
stream still flowed. The pool seemed to be its last stand against the
desert. Gard, tentatively exploring the lower end of this ravine for
fuel, found a few blackberries, drying upon the bushes, and ate them,
eagerly, with appetite still unsated by his breakfast of mesquite
beans. The mesquite grew here, too; with manzanita and scrub oak,
arrow-weed, and black willow.
The man’s chief sensation was a vague surprise at finding himself
still alive. He was too sick—too weak—after his exertion and his rages
of the day before, to consider the problem of keeping himself alive.
He was chilled to the marrow, and yearned like a fire-worshipper
toward the warmth of his camp-glow. He tended the fire carefully.
He dared not let it go out; for that meant the sacrifice of another
precious match.
The elemental appetite awoke when, stooping to drink from the
pool, he saw fish darting about in its clear depths. He worked with
the cunning of a pre-historic man until, by means of the feed bag,
which he emptied of its contents, he succeeded in catching two of
these.
A long thorn of palo-verde served him for a knife in dressing them,
and he cooked them in the earth, with hot stones, laying each fish
between the split halves of broad lobes of the prickly pear. They were
insipid, and full of bones, but they served to satisfy his hunger.
He decided to keep a record of the days that he should spend in
this place; by sticking palo-verde thorns into an out-reaching branch
of willow, near the pool. He would stick in a thorn for each day. He
cursed the first one, as he thrust it against the wood; because he felt
powerless to do anything else.
Following, half sullenly, a mere human instinct to be busy about
something, he set about making a knife from the smallest plate of the
buggy-spring. He heated it in his fire till the paint came off, broke it
in two and spent the day working one thin end down to a cutting
edge, on a big, rough boulder. By night he had six inches of blade
with one rounded, sharp end.
He used this, next day, to cut ocotilla-stalks, to make a bed,
scraping away the thorns with sharp stones. He worked all day; less
because he wanted a bed than because he dimly realized that sanity
lay in occupation. That night he set a snare, and before morning
managed to catch a cotton-tail which he dressed and roasted for his
breakfast.
He was getting over the feeling of being hunted. They would not
search for him now, he reasoned; they must feel satisfied that he had
died in the cloudburst. He bathed in the pool that day, when the sun
was high, and set about constructing a fireplace against the big
boulder. This would make fire-keeping easier.
The days slipped into weeks. Little by little the man was adapting
himself to his environment. He learned to dry the mesquite beans
and grind them between stones into a coarse flour. This he made into
little cakes, which he baked upon a flat stone before the fire. Later, he
turned over a patch of earth, watered it, and sowed it with the oats he
had saved from the storm. Now, however, his food was the mesquite,
the prickly pear, the century plant, and the fish and small game that
he managed to catch.
As he grew stronger he fashioned himself a bow of oak, shaping
and smoothing it with his rough knife, and stringing it with fibres
from the century plant. His shafts were those of the desert Indians,
the arrow weeds growing close at hand, and he tipped them with the
cruel, steel-hard dagger-points of the yucca.
With this primitive weapon he gradually grew skilful; and at last he
shot a buck, as the creature came down to the pool one night, to
drink. He dried the meat, and used the skin, when he had made it
ready, as a covering for his bed.
 Twice, during the winter, the camel came back to the pool. The
creature went as it came, silent, inscrutable. Whither it went Gard
did not know; the pool was evidently one of its ports of call while
going to and fro on the mysterious business of being a camel. It
accepted the man as a matter of course, and left him, when ready,
with the indifference of fate, though Gard could have begged it on
bended knees, to remain.
He was horribly lonely, with nothing but his hate, and a sick
longing for vengeance upon life, to bear him company. There were
days when he cursed the chance that had kept his worthless hulk
alive, while sending Arnold, in all his strength, down to death. He
had no doubt but that the deputy had perished. Nothing could ever
have come, alive, through the rush of water into which he had been
flung.
The weeks became months. His oats were coming up, a little patch
of cool green on the yellow sand, and he had occupation to fend the
field from the small desert creatures that coveted it. He also worked
at times at making various utensils of the red clay that he found in
the valley, baking them in a rude kiln of his own fashioning.
He came by degrees to love this work, and took great pleasure in it.
He even tried to contrive a potter’s wheel, but was balked by lack of
material. He had to content himself, therefore, with modeling the
clay into such shapes of use and beauty as his untaught hands could
achieve. In time he came to ornament his work as well, graving
designs on the edges of his plates and bowls. The camel’s counterfeit
presentment figured on one or two of the larger pieces, and upon the
others, as the impulse prompted, he put inscriptions, until the
homely articles of his daily use came to be a sort of commentary,
seen by no eyes save his own, of his moods, and the longing for their
expression.
He wrote thus upon other things as well. Lacking paper or
implements charcoal and sharpened sticks became his tools; the
rocks and trees; his broad earthen hearth; the plastic clay; even the
yellow sand of the desert, his tablets, and little by little all these
became eloquent of his lonely thoughts.
He put them down upon whatever served, for the mere comfort of
seeing them; scraps of lessons conned in the old brick school-house;
sums; fragments of the multiplication table; roughly drawn maps
and sketches of boyhood scenes; lines from half-remembered poems
and hymns; familiar Bible verses that his mother had taught him.
They came back to him bit by bit, in his solitude. And one and all his
soul found them camps by the way on its long journey up from
despair.
From one of his excursions into the valley he brought home the
empty shell of a desert turtle. This he split, and fashioned the upper
half into a bowl to contain the palo-verde thorns of his record. They
were already crowding the willow branch, and but for them he could
scarcely have realized the passage of days.
There were a hundred and forty-seven thorns on the day that he
transferred them to the new receptacle. Gard could not be sure that
he had one for each day in the desert, but he knew that each one
there actually represented a day.
“I’ve had every one of that lot,” he told himself, talking aloud, as a
solitary man gets to do. “Had ’em in the open, in spite of the law
sharks.”
He still lived from day to day, however, despite his vows, and his
threats of vengeance. He had known, when he sought Ashley
Westcott, begging the price of a ticket east, that he was a doomed
man.
“It’s all borrowed time,” he muttered, shaking the turtle-shell.
His face darkened.
“’T ain’t either,” he cried. “It’s time won back. They stole it from
me down there. They robbed me of three years, the filthy thieves!
What’s a hundred and forty-seven days against that?”
He remembered an occasion when to get away from the wood-pile
that was his special charge, in his boyhood, he had heaped a scant
supply of split wood over a pile of chunks yet untouched by the axe,
and exhibiting the result as his finished task had escaped with his
fellows upon some expedition of pleasure. He had meant to return in
time to complete his work before the cheat should be discovered, but
he forgot it.
His father had first thrashed him well for his wickedness, then
lectured him tenderly about it. The wicked, he had told him, would
not live out half their days. Gard’s laugh as he recalled the words was
more nearly a snarl.
 “He was a good man all right,” he said, “but he didn’t know it all;
not by an eternal lot.”
He tormented himself with other boyish memories: the broad
grassy stretches of the prairie came up before him; the woods that
neighbored his father’s farm; the pleasant fields, and occasional low
hills that had seemed to him so high, before he had seen mountains;
the swimming-pool where he and the fellows played in summer; the
skating-pond where they raced and built forts and fought mimic
battles in winter; the red brick school-house at “The Corners”; the
white church at “The Centre,” where he had gone to Sunday school;
the little shed chamber with its creaking stairs that his mother had
climbed, how many cold nights! to see if he were warmly covered.
She was gone from earth now, but the old boyhood places were left,
and he yearned for them all, with yearning unspeakable.
“I thought I was going to get back to it,” he groaned, through his
set teeth. “I trusted that poison-snake to help me; God! If I could get
these hands on him, just once!”
But the quiet of his hundred and forty-seven days, and the balm of
the healing air, had wrought within him more than he knew. His
excursions afield grew longer, day by day, and in the gray of one
beautiful morning he started out to explore the mountain.
He had traversed the cañon before now, climbing over rocks, and
around mighty boulders washed down by ancient avalanches, or torn
from above by titanic storms, until he came to where the mountain
stream took a leap of some seventy feet, and the sheer face of the cliff
barred his way. This time, however, he followed the cañon’s edge, to
which the trees clung precariously, sycamores, oaks, and, to his
delight, some walnuts. He marked the spot where they grew, as a
place to be visited in the nut season.
The morning was far spent when he reached this point, so he
lingered to rest, to eat the jerked venison and mesquite bread he had
brought with him. Then he resumed his climb until he was well
beyond the timber growths and had to fight his way through
chaparral.
He crawled among this on hands and knees, now and then,
frightening birds, and other small game, from their hiding-places,
and at last came out upon the rocky open, and the broad spaces
where the large creatures of the mountains make their homes. He
noted more than one faint trail leading over the wastes, and now and
again he caught sight of deer in the distance.
Higher still he climbed, into the regions of white sunlight, until the
cold, pure air of the snowy ranges blew through his hair, and he
began to feel the altitude. In spite of this he pressed on, and at last
reached a ridge where grew a few scattered heralds of the great pine
belt above him. Here, quite unexpectedly, the vast waste of the desert
suddenly met his gaze, far, far below.
There was a strange, horrible unreality about it. The far gray plain;
the mountain’s bare, brown bones; the wind-distorted trees; the
solemn, snowy sierras, even the blue arch of the sky, seemed but
components of some fearful nightmare.
“I’m not asleep,” he muttered; “and it’s no dream; I’ve died, and
gone to hell!”
The bitterness of desolation was upon him. His very soul lay bare
in the bright, white sunlight of the heights, and he cowered, like a
child afraid of the dark.
As he stood thus, from out the silence a soft, clear whistle rose
upon the air. It was repeated, then taken up, farther away. The man
quivered as though the sound had struck him. Then his tense
muscles relaxed; he saw the whistlers to be a covey of quail, moving
along the rocks a little below him.
They came nearer, walking in single file, full of curiosity about
him, alert, speculative, keeping up a murmur of little ornithological
remarks among themselves, the while. The gentle fearlessness of the
small, pretty creatures filled all that grim place with an ineffable
grace. A sob strained at the man’s throat.
“Just as if they were in a garden!” he whispered.
Long he stood watching the birds, who presently, as if satisfied
that no harm dwelt in him, scattered about the rocky waste in search
of food. One only remained on watch, guarding the flock from a little
eminence where he stood motionless save for his pretty crest, which
the wind blew from side to side. Gard watched him, fairly hushing
his own breath lest he alarm the small sentinel, who in turn regarded
him, with bright, innocent eyes.
 “To think of it,” the man murmured, “the little, little things, so
fearless, up here in this—this—secret—place—of—the—Most—High!”
He stopped, in vague surprise at his own speech. He had not
meant to say that, but from some neglected recess of his boyhood’s
memory the words had sprung, vital with meaning.
“I wish,” he finally began, after a long pause, and ceased speaking
as a wave of sickening despair swept over his soul. The idleness of
the phrase mocked him; the folly of wishing anything, helpless there
in the bitterness of desolation, came home to him with cruel force.
Then the ache of his spirit’s yearning drew his clenched hands up
toward the blue vault.
“I wish,” he breathed, his heart pounding, his brain awhirl with a
sudden vision of the infinite wonder of things, “I wish that—if there
is such a thing as God in the world I might come to know it.”
Slowly his hands came down to his sides. The sentinel of the rocks
gave a soft little call of reassurance to the flock, which had halted,
observant of the gesture, and the birds resumed their feeding. Gard
turned for another look at the snowy ramparts on high; at the vast
plain below. All their horror was gone, for him, and he began the
descent of the mountain with the peaceful visage of one who has
been in a good place.

Far into the night he awoke with the feeling of something stirring
near him. In the dim firelight he could make out a shadowy figure on
the hearth, and he sprang up in haste. A second glance, however, as
he sat upon his ocotilla bed, showed him that there was no harm in
the visitor shivering there by the coals.
It was a burro, and the listless pose, the drooping ears and the
trembling knees proclaimed a sick burro. It was too miserable even
to move, when Gard threw an armful of brush on the fire and
speedily had a blaze by which he could see the intruder plainly. His
first glance revealed a jagged, dreadful sore on the shoulder next to
the light.
Speaking very gently, he drew nearer to the burro and though the
little creature trembled violently, it let him bend down and examine
the wound.
 A great spike of the long, tough crucifixion-thorn had somehow
become imbedded in the flesh, and the whole surface of the shoulder
was swollen and inflamed. Gard made a little sound of pity in his
throat, and the burro, turning, tried to lick the sore.
“No use to do that yet, Jinny,” the man said. “That thorn’s got to
come out first.”
The burro had probably never before been touched by hands; but
not for nothing was Jinny wide between the ears. She scrutinized her
would-be helper closely, for a moment, through her long lashes, and
drooped her wise-looking little gray head still lower. Gard threw
another armful of light stuff on the fire and when the blaze was
brightest attacked the thorn, using one of his sharp arrows as a
probe.
Once or twice the creature flinched. Once she snapped her strong
teeth at the hurting side; but Gard worked steadily and quickly, and
presently had the offender out.
“Look a’ that, Jinny,” he cried, triumphantly. It was a joy to hear
himself speaking to something alive.
“Look a’ that!” he repeated, “Ain’t you glad you found the doctor
in?”
He dipped warm water from an earthen pot in the ashes, and
washed the wound carefully, talking all the while to the still
trembling patient, silently regarding him. When the place was quite
clean he made a poultice of prickly pear and bound it on with a strip
of deer-skin.
“Lucky I shot another buck, Jinny,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have
that nice bandage.”
The little burro expressed no thanks; only stared solemnly at the
fire. Gard strode out into the darkness and pulled, recklessly, an
armful of his precious, growing oats. He threw the green stuff down
before her and she sniffed it curiously before she began, ravenously,
to eat it.
“Hungry, weren’t you?” the man said, sympathetically. “Been too
sick to eat. Well, well, make yourself at home.”
He threw a big stick upon the fire and went back to his bed, leaving
the burro chewing, meditatively, before the blaze.
 He was just falling asleep when he felt something warm fumbling
about him, and he awoke with a start, and an exclamation that
quickly turned to something very like a laugh. The grateful little
burro was licking his hands.
“Why, Jinny!” he cried, sitting up. “Well, well, Jinny! Well, I’ll be
jiggered!”
He slipped an arm over the rough little neck and the two watched
the fire till dawn.
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