Pay Dirt and Other Whispering Sands Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert

I. A Strange Expedition

If the girl had come clean with me, right from the start, it wouldn’t have happened.

But my first contact was with the man.

He was all dressed up for the desert, the way a Los Angeles tailor thinks a man should be dressed to go hunting. His boots laced all the way up, and his breeches were tailored to a tight fit, pegged out and pressed. The shirt was one of those sport affairs, and the coat was pinched in at the back.

But out on the desert we don’t notice clothes so much, even when they are so gosh-awful as these. We look at the man.

“You’re Bob Zane,” he said, walking up to me in the back of the grocery store where I was outfitting. “I’m George Fargo, and I want to see you on a matter of business.”

He didn’t offer to shake hands, and his words were close clipped, like the words of a business executive who’s accustomed to make men grovel before him or else lose their jobs. I didn’t like the tone, and I didn’t like the eyes.

Out in the desert we don’t grovel. We’re too close to blue skies, the quiet of the stars, and the edict of nature that says the fit ones are going to survive, while the weak ones get pushed under, grovel or not.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m Bob Zane, and I don’t take out fishing parties.”

He frowned.

“I didn’t say anything about a fishing party. This is different. If you’re interested in twenty dollars a day I can talk.”

Twenty dollars a day is big money anywhere. Out in the desert it’s bigger.

He saw my eyes light, and he turned away, so I’d have to follow him to the other end of the store.

I hesitated, weighed the twenty a day against what I’d have to put up with, and turned back to my groceries.

He paused, looked back over his shoulder, saw I wasn’t following, and had to swallow his pride and come back to me. I knew then that we were going to hate each other.

“Go on and talk,” I said.

He straightened, very rigid, very much under control, and very mad down underneath it all.

“My business can’t be discussed right here,” he observed.

“I’ll drop around and see you then, after a while,” I told him, getting the groceries put in the kyaks so that they balanced about even. “My business is right here, and if I get these things outa balance it’s going to mean a sore back for my burro.”

He lowered his voice.

“I am interested in a mine,” he said.

“Yeah?” I observed, getting some flour wedged nicely into a corner.

“And I must start right away. There are three men and a woman in the party.”

I straightened, dusted the flour off my hands.

“Okay,” I said. “A woman’s different. Where do you want to talk?”

He walked back to the other side of the store. I followed him. He was so mad his eyes were pale, but he managed to keep control of his voice.

“They tell me you know the desert as no other living man,” he said, grudgingly.

I said nothing.

“I must have the best guide that money can buy. Can you get a pack train outfit together, get provisions and blankets and leave by afternoon?”

“It’ll take a lot of money to get an outfit like that on such short notice. We’ll have to pick up local stuff, and they’ll stick us.”

“I have the money,” he snapped.

“I can get the stuff,” I said, and my tone was just as crisp as his.

“We want to go to Burro Springs,” he said.

“That all?” I asked.

“That’s all,” he said.

“No reason for all the secrecy then. Hundreds of people go to Burro Springs. You come in a car?”

“Yes.”

“Better store it and get something to eat then. Meet me here at three o’clock, and we start. Give me some money now.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

I thought the sum would scare him out and then I’d be free to go back to my own business. But he took out a roll, peeled off the three outside bills as though he’d been tossing scraps of meat to a stray dog, and walked away.

I hated his insides, but I couldn’t turn down twenty dollars a day. I started getting the outfit together.

This much I’ll say for him, he was on time.

They showed up at three o’clock, on the dot. I had the whole thing packed and ready to go. Some of the saddles were pretty ancient, but they’d make the trip, and they were the best the desert town afforded.

I saw the girl then, and the other two men.

No one introduced us. They just asked which burros they were to ride, and climbed aboard. I lengthened the stirrups on one of the men’s saddles and shortened those on the girl’s saddle, and then we started.

She was slender, gray eyed, and silent. There was a poise about her that I liked. The other two men were puzzles to me. They walked with a swagger, and they wore city clothes and looked as though they’d like to fight the world.

Oh, well, the desert would take that out of them.

I led the way. The afternoon start gave us the sun at our backs, made it possible to get ’em broken in to the saddle without killing ’em, and caught the desert when the glare wasn’t so bad.

We angled down the steep slope of colored mountains, watched the shadows fill the cañons with purple, and came to the camping place I’d picked.

“Where’s the water?” asked Fargo.

“In the canteens.”

“Isn’t there any spring?”

“Not here. To-morrow night.”

“I want to wash.”

“Go ahead. There are four canteens, one apiece. Use that water any way you want. It’ll last you until to-morrow night.”

He turned on his heel and walked away.

I got a campfire going and put on some tea water. Then I looked around to see who was doing what. Evidently I was the only customer. No one seemed to think they should do anything, except the girl. She came over to help with the cooking.

“I’m Vera Camm,” she said. “I know your name. You’re Bob Zane. I want to help.”

I saw her right hand thrust out, and took it in my grizzled desert paw. I liked her smile and her voice. We cooked them up a good meal. The girl straightened up the dishes. The men did nothing.

The campfire died down, and the desert mountains got a tang in the air that penetrated.

Fargo shivered, looked at me.

“The fire’s dying down,” he said.

I nodded.

“We need some more wood,” he said, after a while.

I waved my hand toward the side of the mountain.

“There’s lots of sage. It makes a good fire.”

He sat still, and I sat still. The cold crept in. It’s a dry, insidious cold, but the air’s so light that it gets into your blood. The fire was just coals, and the stars came out and blazed steadily as the light of the fire shrank.

I kicked off my shoes and rolled up in my blankets.

After a few minutes Fargo turned to one of the two men.

“Harry,” he said, “go get some wood.”

The man got up and looked steadily at Fargo for a minute.

“Yeah,” he said, “we’ll all go.”

The other man got up. They both looked at Fargo. He squirmed. I could hear his breath suck in as he started to say something. Then he got to his feet. He was reluctant about it, but he went.

They came back with wood and threw it on the coals. It made quite a fire. They sat up and talked for quite a while. I went to sleep, woke up once or twice, found ’em still huddled there, the girl had gone off to her blankets. I noticed that she spread ’em so I was between her and the men.

About two o’clock in the morning I woke up.

Everything was quiet. The stars were steady, and the coals had gone down until there was just a reddish glow under the ashes.

The wind was coming down the slope.

Pretty soon the desert would start to whisper. That’s the way the desert does, nights. The wind springs up without warning, dies down the same way. The sand slithers along on the wind and rattles against the sage until it seems to whisper. Then, when the wind freshens, the sand slithering along the sandy surface of the desert makes the most elusive whisper of them all, the pure sand whisper.

A lot of old timers claim they can hear words when the desert starts to talk and they’re drifting off to sleep. It’s just a trick the ears play on a man’s brain when he’s dozing off, of course, but it’s something you’ll hear from almost anybody that’s spent much of his life in the desert.

I listened as the wind freshened and the sand started its hissing whispers. All around me I could hear the people stirring in their blankets, shifting about. I could have cut sage for them and made a pretty comfortable mattress under each blanket roll, but I didn’t do it. I had a hunch they might be out some time, and it’d be better to let ’em get hardened up. The desert’s cruel, all right, and it’s kindly. It’s the cruelty that makes it kind. It licks people into shape.

Mercy and kindness are funny things. Sometimes you can be more kind to people by being cruel to ’em. Lots of times you see people that have been pampered and humored all their lives until it’s done funny things to their characters. The desert ain’t that kind. It don’t pamper anybody. It’s like the ocean. One mistake, and that’s all.

The desert breeds men.

I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up the east was getting greenish with a streak of red on the opposite range of mountains that shut off the first of the sunrise colors.

I kicked out of my blankets and started after the burros.

I figured they’d either get up and start the fire and the coffee, or they wouldn’t. If they did, they’d get a good breakfast. If they didn’t, they’d take what they got. I could travel a long ways without much grub; I figured the others were accustomed to city stuff.

One of the burros was a drifter. I cussed. That meant the others were following along, hobbles and all. A burro that’s a good drifter can do a lot, even with hobbles.

I was some little time getting ’em located. Then they were down a mean cañon. Only a burro could have gone down the way they went; a horse would never have done it, not with hobbles.

The sun was slanting along the high slopes as I started back with the burros. I topped the ridge and heard a crisp revolver shot. Then I heard another and another.

I hadn’t strapped on my gat, but left it in my bed roll, which is the proper place for a gent’s gun, the way things are nowadays in the desert.

But those revolver shots sounded like business.

I slid off the burro I was forking, and crawled up to the ragged summit of the ridge, picked a place for my head where it wouldn’t be too prominent, and looked down.

They were the two men who were with Fargo. At first I didn’t get it. They were making funny motions, jumping about and shooting. I thought maybe it was a rattlesnake when I saw the bullets kick up the dust.

Then I saw what they were doing. They were practicing. They had shoulder holsters, and they were putting the guns back in them between shots. Then they’d crouch, whip their hands to the guns, rip ’em out, and fire at a bowlder that was on the ground.

They didn’t seem to be hitting the bowlder. But they were coming close to it.

I went back to the burros and strung ’em along the little trail that they’d made coming down. By the time I got into sight the firing had stopped.

The girl had the fire going and coffee ready. She was wrestling with the cooking, but campfire cooking is different from stove cooking.

I came in and helped her get the hang of it.

“You need a helper,” I said, looking at where the three men sprawled on the ground.

No one said anything.

I went to the burros and started to get on the saddles and packs. It took some little time. The girl had breakfast ready when I was about half finished. It consisted of pancakes that were burnt on the edges and raw in the center. The bacon had burnt, and the coffee was too strong.

The men grumbled about the food, looked at me.

I grinned at the girl.

“You’re doing fine, Miss Camm,” I told her.

Her eyes were red from the smoke, and her hair had straggled down around her forehead. She didn’t look happy, but she was game.

“Well,” said Fargo, “Zane won’t have to pack the burros at noon, so he can cook us a regular desert banquet.”

I waited until his eyes met mine.

“We don’t stop until to-night,” I told him.

He flushed.

“I’m running this show,” he said.

“Go ahead and run it any time you want to,” I said. “Two of these burros are mine. The rest are yours.”

He didn’t say anything. One of the men snickered.

We got started, and the sun began to do its stuff.

I rode close to the girl. “Got some cold cream handy?”

“Yes.”

“Put it on thick, and leave it on. Put lipstick on your lips. Don’t wash your face in water. Use cream.”

Then I rode away.

The sport shirts of the men left their necks exposed, places where their collars usually covered. And the desert sun, reflecting from sand, is pitiless.

After a while they covered up their necks with handkerchiefs. But the damage was done by that time. They looked like boiled lobsters. They fidgeted about in the saddles, got off and walked part of the time.

It was a day that wasn’t pleasant for them, any of them. They almost had to be pulled from the saddles and their legs straightened when we made camp.

I pushed the girl away from the fire and did the cooking. I gave them some good grub. It was wholesome, but it wasn’t any banquet. The men grumbled. They were hungry and tired.

“The thing for you to do,” I said, “is to start dividing up the work. You’d better make arrangements right now, one to get the wood, one to do the dishes, one to help the girl with the cooking.”

Fargo glared.

“I’m not accustomed to manual labor,” he said.

I nodded.

“You’re going to change. Either you’ll get accustomed to manual labor, or your stomach’ll get accustomed to going without grub.”

The girl stared at me, startled.

Fargo struggled to his feet, towered over me.

“When I say anything,” he snarled, “it goes. See?”

I motioned toward the fire with my hand.

“See if you can tell the fire to bum without wood,” I suggested.

He stood there for a while, then shifted his position. I didn’t even let on I knew he was there. The fire went down and it got cold. The girl was ready for her blankets. She rolled in. I kicked off my shoes and coat, crawled in my blankets.

“I’m cold,” said Fargo. “The blanket rolls you got were too light, Zane.”

“You’ll get used to ’em,” I said, and yawned. “Build the fire up if you get too cold.”

And I dropped off to sleep.

When I woke up the fire was crackling. One of the men had gone for wood, perhaps all three of them. They were huddled together, talking in low voices.

The next night we made Burro Springs.

The girl took out a pencil and paper. She wrote a document, read it over, frowned, scratched out a word here and there, and handed it to Fargo.

“This,” she said, “gives you your protection.”

Fargo folded it, stuck it in his pocket without reading it, grinned at the others, nodded to the girl.

“Thanks,” he said.

They got wood for the campfire without any argument. The camp was commencing to function smoothly. I drifted off to sleep. The three men talked over the campfire.

The next morning I had the usual chase after the burros. It was a long chase. I figured on turning the drifter loose and getting along with one less pack burro. He sure was a nuisance. I came on in with the string and I was sore.

The sunlight caught something white at just the right angle, and glittered. I saw that it was a piece of paper. There were others near it. The papers were rustling in the first of a morning breeze. I knew it’d spring up hard for half an hour or so, and then go down.

I got to wondering about the papers. Perhaps some one was ahead of us. I swung the burros so I went over past them. It was still a quarter of a mile from camp.

The paper looked familiar. I saw there was pencil writing on it, and that it was a woman’s writing. I picked up a piece of the paper, then got interested and went out after the others. When I had them all, I fitted them together.

It made interesting reading. It was the paper the girl had given Fargo for his “protection.”

I read it over two or three times, and the more I read the funnier it all seemed. That paper evidenced the understanding between the four of them. Evidently the two men were bodyguards or mining claim guards, as you’d want to call them. They thought they were on the trail of a rich mine. The girl evidently had the directions.

She’d given Fargo this writing. Under its terms, Fargo was to have a tenth interest. Without it, he only had the girl’s word. I’d heard of people whose words were as good as their bonds, but I’d never before heard of a case where words were better.

But Fargo had taken this paper out in the desert, torn it up, deliberately and derisively, and thrown the pieces away. Why?

In one way it wasn’t my business. In another way it was. I put the pieces of paper in my pocket, and went into camp.

II. Betrayed

“This is where you wanted to go,” I said, “Burro Springs.”

They looked at the girl.

She had her answer ready.

“Go twenty miles up the valley between the two ranges. Then look for a peculiar notched peak in The Last Chance Mountains. The notch is like this.”

And she gave us a sketch.

I knew the peak, but I didn’t say so.

“Twenty miles?” I said.

“Twenty miles,” she said.

“It’s a tough country up there, up near the head of Death Valley, and the desert is none too friendly anywhere along in there.

“We go through a pass?” I asked, knowing we’d have to get to where the peak showed just that profile against the sky.

She looked confused.

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that. Yes, we go through a pass after we’ve gone three miles. We turn to the left.”

I nodded.

“Better look at your sailing directions again and make sure,” said Fargo, and he grinned, a big, friendly grin. It was the first time I’d seen him twist his lips in anything like a friendly grin. But, even then, his eyes were hard.

She shook her head, decisively.

“It is not necessary,” she said.

Fargo hesitated for a minute. His lips were cracked, and his neck and face looked sun tortured, his temper was worn thin and his eyes were flecked with red veins, but he controlled himself, and kept friendly.

“It’s lots of fun, ain’t it?” he said.

One of the men laughed.

“It’s going to be more fun,” he said.

I went over to my blanket roll and got out my gun and the cartridge belt, strapped it on.

The two guards looked at me.

“Zane must be expecting to hunt a rabbit,” said Fargo.

I shook my head.

“You sometimes run into a coyote along in here,” I told them.

“You kill ’em?” asked Fargo.

“Not always,” I answered, “but I like to have my gun where I can reach it — when I’m dealing with coyotes.”

I thought that little warning would be all they needed.

We got started. That afternoon, late, we were where the peaks cut the sky.

“Now what?” asked Fargo.

“We turn up this cañon,” she said, and her voice was tremulous with excitement.

“You sure?” asked Fargo.

“Yes. The map’s as plain as can be from here on.”

I led the way up the cañon, and I decided I’d have the old six-gun ready to yank out. I didn’t like the attitude of the men.

“How far?” asked Fargo.

I didn’t get the immediate significance of what followed. The girl reached for the front of her blouse, and one of the men who had been to my right sort of hitched in his saddle.

“We’re all partners now,” said the girl, “and there’s no further need for secrecy.”

I sensed something of surreptitious motion, and whirled.

I was staring into the business end of an automatic, and the grinning teeth of the man who went by the name of Harry Osgood.

“If you’d unbuckle that gun belt, I could hoist the whole works over here onto my saddle,” he said.

I looked in his eyes, and knew he meant business.

The girl screamed.

Fargo had simply thrown his arms around her, and held her hands pinioned. There was a scrap of paper in one of them, something that was slick and dirty, the sort of paper a prospector would have used for a penciled map.

The other gunman was standing, well away from his burro, his automatic in his hand. The afternoon rays of the sun were sending long purple shadows along the cañons. There wasn’t a soul within sight save the members of our party. It was a wild, unfrequented stretch of desert.

Fargo tore the paper from the girl’s grasp.

I know death when I see it in a man’s eyes. Killing men is something like the dope habit. Some killers get so it’s an obsession with ’em. They like to pull the trigger and see an adversary crumple. It’s just like dope to the complexes that they build up.

This man Osgood had the eyes of a killer. He was getting ready to pull the trigger.

I’d expected there might be trouble if we got to the mine and found that it was rich, but I hardly thought they’d try murder over something that was just a dubious pencil cross on a rough sketch map. It just shows what happens when a man gets too trusting in the desert.

Osgood eased the gun over to his saddle.

“Now, you rat, take this, and...”

Fargo interrupted.

“Wait. We’ll see if we can find it first. Remember, this man knows the desert.”

Osgood stood snarling at me, his eyes glittering with the gleam of a killer.

“Not yet, not yet, Harry,” called the other gunman.

He went by the name of Rankin, and I thought he was more likely to be a leader than Osgood. He had more power. What I hadn’t counted on was Osgood’s killing complex.

Osgood hesitated. Rankin came up. They slipped a rope around my shoulders. One of them heaved. I went off the burro, and one foot caught in the stirrup. I got dragged and stepped on before I could kick free. The three men got a great kick out of it. They laughed long and loud.

They had the girl tied by the time I was free of the stirrup and on my feet again. They knotted my elbows so my hands were behind me, and stuck a gun in my back. Fargo was studying the sketch map he’d taken from the girl.

“Okay?” asked Rankin.

“Okay,” said Fargo.

“Let’s go.”

They went up the cañon. Fargo read the trail from the map.

They turned up a branch cañon, climbed to a mesa. I could see where some one had camped in there, making a dry camp. It had been some little time ago.

They still consulted the map, but I could see the little foot-trail that went to a rock outcropping that had been opened up.

They found the rock. The wild whoop that went up from Fargo’s lips was all I needed to tell me that our death warrant had been signed. That was why they’d jumped us before they had actually located the mine. It was one of those fabulously rich mines that have jewelry rock right on the surface.

I cursed the impulse that had sent me out to guide these crooks. I had some mighty valuable mining properties in a corporation. I didn’t really need the money, only I had a desert man’s horror of borrowing money and pledging stock as collateral. I was keeping that stock free and clear, and earning my living until the stock paid dividends, and now it looked as though the life insurance companies were due to pay up on the policy I’d taken out a couple of years ago.

But the men were so excited over the gold they forgot us. The girl was near me.

“What will they do?” she asked, but her tone and the dark terror of her eyes showed that she knew, without having to ask me. The men were gangsters from the city, gunmen who had perfected their skill in the art of killing. There had never been a badman in the desert who was as ruthless as these killers.

I tried a grin.

“Maybe get drunk,” I told her.

They were drunk, too, drunk with greed and gloating with avarice. They broke off chunks of rock, jumped around, flung up their hats.

Finally they thought of us and the burros. It was getting dark, almost dark enough to have warranted us in making a break. But they came to their senses in time.

They put me down with my back to a rock, and the girl beside me. Then they started to unpack the burros. Osgood was having a talk with Fargo. Fargo was shaking his head determinedly.

“There’s going to be a rush here, and digging all around the place. We’ve got to make certain we’ve got a place where there won’t be trouble. Wait a while.”

I hoped the girl didn’t know what they were talking about. They were figuring on killing us. But Fargo was thinking ahead. He wanted to have it so our bodies wouldn’t be found. I knew his type. He was one of the kind that likes to gloat. He’d come and gloat over us, tell us he was going to make us dig our own graves, and all that.

The girl was dry-eyed. I thought maybe she’d burst into tears, but she just stuck her chin up and took it.

They piled all the blankets, all the grub, all the saddles into one big pile, and they didn’t know anything about hobbling the burros. They just turned ’em loose. I could tell them something about those burros, what with that drifter along. But I wasn’t doing any talking just then.

They got a fire going. It got dark.

Fargo came over to us, sneered gloatingly at me.

“Sucker,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Thought you was going to be the big man and make me respect you, didn’t you? You wasn’t going to be a servant, not you. You were just the guide. We could divide the work up. Bah! I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going ’way up the cañon where there’s a nice quiet place and work half the night digging a big hole. I won’t tell you what’s going in that hole — not right now I won’t. I’ll save it for a surprise.”

And then he kicked me in the ribs.

The girl screamed.

Fargo laughed, walked over toward the campfire. The girl was breathing hard, as though she’d been running. I heard a dry sob come from her lips and the shoulders heaved quaveringly. But she didn’t turn on the weeps.

III. On the Cañon’s Wall

I saw they were talking again, having another of their low-voiced conferences. The rock I was against had a jagged edge, and I started to saw, making my arms go up and down against it.

It was a forlorn hope. That rope would take a great deal of sawing, but then, it gave me something to do. I was furious with myself for being trapped so easy.

But I got a break. The rope caught on a projection. I pushed my weight down on my arms to pull the rope free, and I felt the knot slip. These men were tenderfeet in spite of their viciousness, and they’d tied a knot that had some slip in it.

It doesn’t take much slip to give a man’s arms quite a bit of play. The rope slacked. I worked my arms. The rope dropped.

I had a knife in my pocket.

Before the girl knew what was happening, I had it out and her ropes cut.

There was a little wash behind us. We were against a rock that was right on the rim.

“Over backwards, light running, keep down the cañon, the shadows are deeper there. One... two... three.”

We went into a back somersault and down the wash just as though we’d rehearsed the act.

There was commotion above us, but I didn’t have any time to see what was going on. The men ran toward the bank and started to shoot. But they’d been staring into the flames of the fire, and it gets dark quick in the desert.

I didn’t want to keep right with the girl because two make twice as big a mark as one. So I let her go first, and I stumbled along behind. There were rocks in the bed of that wash and where it opened into the main cañon there was a steep drop of about ten feet. The girl slid down it. A bullet clipped the rock by the side of my head as I followed suit.

I caught up with her fifty yards or so down the main cañon. She was panting, about all in from the shock, the run, the excitement. I could hear the others coming pell mell down the cañon after us, and I knew they could outrun her.

But they were tenderfeet, and they wouldn’t go too strong on reading trail. Also it was dark. So I guided her up a rock outcropping.

“Now you’ve got to keep your nerve, and don’t make any noise,” I told her. “They’ll come closer. But just be a sport and keep your head.”

We went up.

It was slow work, climbing. And running down the cañon was a lot faster. The pursuers came clattering down the rocky bed of the stream when we weren’t over fifty feet above them.

I flattened the girl down so there’d be no silhouette showing against the sky.

They went past on the dead run. One of them was shooting into the darkness, and I could see the stabbing flashes of the automatic.

The girl stopped breathing. It was a strain on her. I thought she was going to faint. But the men went past. I chuckled, just to help her keep her spirits up, and then quit chuckling. The men had come to a sudden stop, not over twenty yards below us.

“They couldn’t have gone down there,” said Fargo’s voice.

“Listen,” said Rankin. “See if we can hear ’em.”

They listened.

If they were wise they’d know that we must have gone up, and it wouldn’t take much of a search to find us. By myself, I could have laughed at them. But there was the girl.

Then I got a break.

The shooting had alarmed the burros. There was a clatter down the cañon. To ears that knew the desert, it was only too apparent what that noise was, burros stampeding down the cañon, half a mile away. But these men had forgotten about the burros and their ears weren’t trained to the desert.

“Way to thunder and gone down there!” snarled Fargo. “How could they have covered all that distance?”

“A short cut, maybe,” said Rankin.

“Let’s follow and kill ’em. They gotta stop. They ain’t armed.”

That would be Osgood, the killer.

Fargo gave the vote.

“No. They’ve got no food, no water. The desert will get them. Even if they do get to civilization, no one will believe their story if we deny it. And we’ll locate this claim, rush in to get her recorded, then make a fake sale to a corporation and skip out. The corporation will run it. We’ve got possession, and remember it’s possession that counts. The girl never did locate the claim. She had the sketch map. We got here first and located.”

“We’ll follow ’em in the morning, anyhow,” said Osgood. “The girl can’t go far. We got lots of water. They ain’t got any. The canteens are all in camp.”

Sitting up there on the side of the outcropping in the still desert night, hearing every word they said, it seemed strange that we weren’t discovered. But these men were city men, green to the desert, and the burros were still making a racket. The shooting and the bullets that had cut around them were enough to start a stampede, even without a drifter along.

We didn’t have anything, food, water, blankets or guns. I thought some of trying to jump down and beat them back to camp, trusting to find my gun there in the pile of stuff, and fighting them off.

But they’d hear me before I had gone ten feet, and there was the girl... I waited. They turned back up the cañon, walking below us, once more, and they were talking.

“It’ll be moonlight after midnight. We can get started then. They can’t have gone far. The girl was all in anyway, and she had a blister on her heel. She mentioned it this morning, remember?”

Fargo growled an answer.

“I’m going to put bullets right between that guy Zane’s ears,” said Osgood. “If you guys had let me pull the trigger this afternoon we’d be out of all this mess now, and everything would have been all nice and regular.”

“You’ve got to hide the bodies,” said Fargo.

“Hell, I never did see such a fuss made over a stiff. I’ve bumped ’em by the score, and left ’em where they got bumped, for the most part. Once, in a hick town, I did pack the corpse on the running board, so I could dump him on the lawn of the courthouse, where the officers could have him handy...”

“This is the desert,” said Fargo.

“Aw, you give me a pain in the belly,” snarled Osgood.

There was a sudden cessation of steps. Fargo may not have known it, but he was close to death at that time. Then I heard Rankin say something in a low voice, and they went back to the camp, clattering up the wash. After a while I could see their silhouettes moving against the fire. I waited until I was certain they were all three together there.

If they’d been wise, they’d have kept one man out for a listening post. But they were hungry, and they all crowded around the campfire.

I figured it’d be a good time to put some spirit into the girl. We had a hard trek ahead of us.

“Well,” I said, “we got out of that lucky. Now we can make a forced march, get to the automobile road and find a car, get to civilization and swear out warrants for that bunch of crooks.”

She sighed, that same tremulous, dry sobbing sigh.

“But can we do it?”

“Oh, I think so,” I said.

“We haven’t had anything to eat or drink. I remembered what you said about a dry camp, and I haven’t eaten all day or taken a drink. I was getting toughened up. They’ll have lots of food and water. And even if we get into court we can’t fight them. They’ll swear we tried to take the mine away from them. After all, possession counts, and we never did make any location.”

There were all those difficulties ahead of us, all right, but they were bridges we could cross when we came to them. What worried me was whether we could make the auto road, and whether there’d be a machine along it in time to do us any good. I had a hunch these men might start getting some sense, and patrol the routes toward the highway. There were some passes...

And then finally the girl started to sob.

I have a hard time when a woman sobs. I don’t hear it often enough. She cried for maybe a full minute, and then clung to my shoulder and quit it.

“I’m trusting to you,” she said. “I wish I’d confided in you right at the start.”

That would have been a wonderful idea, if she’d had it sooner, but it wasn’t of much use now. There was no time to waste figuring what would have been a good move to make if we’d made it.

“Let’s go,” I told her.

I helped her ease her way down the outcropping so she wouldn’t make any noise, and we started to walk. It was slow going, trying to be silent, and I knew that the faintest noise would bring them down on us. And they’d know then what we’d done to throw them off the trail the first time. It wouldn’t be so easy the second time.

We got pretty well out of the cañon, and I turned the girl so she was angling along a slope. I knew a short cut to a road on the other side of the mountains. We’d have to climb, but I thought there’d be water in one of the springs that was near enough to the route to make it worth while stopping to find out. But it’d be tough.

I could see her limping, and knew the blister wouldn’t get any better. Her boots were more of the department store kind that make a nice window display, but rub raw places on the feet when you get them out in the mountains.

Then she pitched, flung up her arms and went down.

I was afraid of the answer, even before I realized what it was. She tried to get up, lurched forward, and lay still. I felt for the ankle. She winced.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “that it’s broken.”

She might have been commenting on the weather, for all the expression of pain that was in her voice. But I knew how she felt.

It was the end.

I sat there. The ankle wasn’t broken, but it was a bad sprain, and I could feel it swelling. I managed to unlace the boot before we had to cut the leather. We sat in a huddle. It wasn’t a nice fix.

Then the wind sprang up and the desert began to talk. I could hear the sand whispering softly down the slope, rustling against the sparse sagebrush, hissing against the rock outcroppings.

“What a nasty, cruel place the desert is!” she spat.

“It’s the nicest mother a man ever had,” I told her.

“It’s cruel,” she said.

“And cruelty is really the best form of parental kindness. It makes one self-reliant.”

She sighed and pitched over so that her whole weight was resting against my shoulder.

“Well,” she said, “there’s a chance, and just a chance. You leave me and start traveling for help. You can leave a fire and some wood for me to keep it going. They’ll find me, of course, but they won’t dare to kill me, not with the story you can tell. They’ve either got to kill you, get rid of you, or else leave me alone.”

I broke it to her gently.

“That’s exactly what they would do — leave you alone. They’d just pretend they hadn’t seen you, would walk off and leave you here, alone in the desert, without food or water, and with a sprained ankle. Then, when people found you... they’d be blameless. The cause of your death would be all too apparent.”

I didn’t tell her just how they could tell. There was no use rubbing it in. People who die of thirst in the desert die a death that isn’t pleasant. And the last thing they do is to start digging with their hands. The cruel gravel of the desert rips the flesh from the bones...

We sat there in silence. The desert talked.

“Somehow, it seems like the desert’s talking to us,” she said.

“That’s what lots of people think when they’ve lived in the desert for a while,” I told her.

“But it seems to be saying something.”

I knew that it was only her imagination.

The desert whispers do that to people. Their ears get so fed up with the vast, aching silence of the place that they are anxious to interpret sounds as words. The mind is lonely, and the parts of the brain that hear speech get hungry. Just the same way the sound of the wind in trees will always sound like water to a thirsty man.

We sat for a spell in silence again. There was nothing else to do. It was the end.

I couldn’t carry her and reach any water. I doubted if I could get help and return to her.

The stars wheeled by majestically overhead.

And then the desert spell caught me, the desert seemed to be trying to talk. I shook off the feeling, knowing it was just the desert hypnosis. But the feeling came back.

I listened to the desert for a while, and then I started talking to the girl in a low voice, telling her what I’d been thinking.

“I’ve been laying down on the job,” I told her gently. “We should never have figured on running away. I should have fought the thing out. That’s what the desert’s trying to tell us.”

“Don’t be foolish. You’re one man, and you’re unarmed. They’re three, and they’re armed, and they’ve got all the advantage.”

I shook my head. The thought was taking a firmer root in my mind now. “Wrong,” I said. “I’m not just one man. I’ve got the desert on my side. These people don’t know the desert. I’m going to tackle them, and the desert’s going to help me. You can think I’m foolish and that the desert’s cruel, but I’m telling you that what I say is right. The desert’s going to help.”

She turned to stare at me. I got to my feet.

“You’ll have to be brave, and wait here. Keep out of sight, and wait for me. I’ll come back. It’ll be a long time, perhaps to-morrow night. You won’t dare to make even a fire. Hunger and thirst will be terrific, but the desert will win for us. When you begin to feel thirsty and the sun beats down on you, just be brave and know that it’s the desert helping.”

She was quiet for a little while, and the sand, slithering along on the sand, seemed to make whispers of encouragement.

“I think I understand,” she said. “I am not afraid.”

I patted her shoulder.

“Be brave,” I told her. Her hand came groping up mine, patted the side of my face.

“Good luck,” she said, and I surely needed it.

And I slipped down the slope into the darkness.

IV. Desert Tricks

I didn’t want her to know exactly what I was planning on doing, so I waited until I’d covered a hundred yards or so before I started to put my plan into execution.

There was a juniper tree, twisted and stunted, but a regular tree of the desert places. It had been forced to weather cruel heat and dry days, to stand up against twisting winds and hissing sand. The desert had been cruel to it, and it had received the reward of the desert. It had become tempered and strong.

I cut a limb and flexed it into the shape I wanted. It was green, but it had plenty of spring. The Indians make bows out of the juniper tree. It’s a tempered wood, one you can trust.

I took my bootlaces and split out a thong from them that was strong enough for my purpose. Then I started to climb. I wanted pine, and pine grows up near the summits. I knew where there were a few trees.

It was a hard climb, and I took it as easy as I dared. It was going to be a big battle, and I needed to conserve all my strength.

The desert seemed to have whispered long enough to attract attention to itself as an ally, and then to have quieted down. It was silent now, the wind had ceased, the sand was still.

The faintest breath of air was stirring, but not enough to make the sand start to talk.

I collected some of the sort of pine I wanted, pitchy knots that were bone dry and would bum like tinder, and stay burning. Then I went back down the mountain and made the juniper branch into a bow, strung it taut with the leather thong, and tied the pitch knots on to the ends of some makeshift arrows I whittled from the straightest of the dead pine. It wasn’t so much of an outfit, but would serve.

I started a still hunt up to the camp. The three men were in one of their huddles around the campfire. The possibility of being attacked by a lone, unarmed man was one of the things that hadn’t entered their minds. They were having lots to talk about and lots to think about, and the most of the camp equipment was where they had left it.

I’ve stumbled onto a bonanza myself once or twice, and I know the feeling. A man doesn’t sleep right away, no matter how tired he’s been.

I inched my way up into the overhang of a rock outcropping. The eastern sky was commencing to pale with the coming of the moon.

I could hear wind rushing down the slopes of the mountains. It would reach the cañon in a minute and the desert would start talking again.

I struck a match and lit one of the pine knots.

Then I drew back the flaming arrow and shot the bow.

It wasn’t far, and the first arrow went straight to the mark, lit right on the pile of stuff they’d taken from the burro. I knew there were some caps and some giant powder in that pile, somewhere.

I fitted another arrow.

The flickering light of the blazing pine knot caught their eyes, huddled around the campfire as they were, and one of them turned. Just as he yelled, I launched the second arrow. I tried to keep cool. Perhaps it was the excitement, perhaps it was the crude arrow and the green bow. But the arrow was short and to one side.

They saw my position then.

I was lighting the third knot as the bullets started to spatter. They were doing some fair shooting, too. I could feel the vicious spat of the missiles striking on the face of the rock. But I had pretty fair protection, and they were shooting without being able to line up the sights.

The third arrow sailed out, straight and true. It lit within three feet of the first, lodged right on a roll of blankets, right under a box.

I wondered if that box was the one that had the giant powder?

Still the fools didn’t realize their danger. They continued to rake the side of the mountain with gunfire. I had a fourth knot ready to light, and was even groping for the match when I saw what was happening.

The fire had gotten under some sort of grease — bacon, perhaps — perhaps some oil for cooking. Anyway, it flared up in a big sheet of snarling flame that writhed and twisted about a border of greasy black smoke that vortexed in swirling confusion. And the solid bank of wind, rushing down the mountainside, caught the flames and sent them billowing out in a flat sheet.

One of the men yelled something about the grub and the water. Then another remembered the powder. If he hadn’t called the warning, it would have been all over within ten seconds. But the warning gave them time to fling themselves down the cañon, get the shelter of the dirt walls.

Then it happened. The red flame suddenly expanded into a great, white hot ball of fire, a mushroom of blasting destruction. Objects, looming as black as the silhouette of a dead tree against a lightning flare, were tossed up on the fringes of this burst of flame. The ground seemed to part.

Then there was a terrific roar. The mountainside shook. A blast of air was shot upward by the force of the explosion, a hot wave of sound-filled air that puffed up the mountainside. Then everything was black, and the distant ranges started reverberating back the roaring echoes of that explosion.

I started on a run down the mountainside, and the moon lifted up over the top of the range at the very instant my plodding feet started churning the earth.

They saw me when I had covered fifty yards, and they opened fire. It was what I’d been hoping for. I ducked behind a rock, angled into a side cañon, went down instead of up, and showed myself along the moonlight that gilded the slope of the next ridge. That drew me some more shots.

I kept going.

They were following, strung out behind me, casting grotesque shadows in the moonlight. I went over into the shadows and headed straight down. They rather expected me to keep on angling. I had to show myself in a patch of moonlight, wait for a moment, to let them see me and draw their fire. Then they came boiling down after me.

I crossed into the shadow and doubled back.

They came on past me, running, stopping, peering.

I heard Fargo’s panting words. He was the thinker of the crowd.

“We’re wiped out... food... water... all gone... Follow him... he knows a spring... don’t shoot any more.”

I chuckled to myself. They’d got the idea sooner than I expected they would.

I waited until they’d gone past, then I went on down the shadowed slope, taking it easy. I was conserving my strength now. They were still running, combing the side of the mountains in breathless panic.

No one needed to return to the camp to see what had happened. That explosion had wiped out the little mesa, just as though a volcano had opened up under it. There wasn’t any camp equipment left. They knew it and I knew it. We were starting on an equal basis, except that they were one meal ahead of me, and several drinks of water. But I knew the desert and they didn’t. The desert is kind to those who have grown to know her, and cruel to those who haven’t slept out under her stars long enough to learn her rigid ways.

I let them comb the mountainside as long as I dared before I came out on a ridge well down toward the flat of the desert. They saw me, and there was a shout as they conveyed the information. Then they started down after me.

I kept in plain sight after that. I was out of range of their revolvers, anyway, but I was safe. I was their only hope of getting out. They didn’t know where they were, nor which way to head for water. The burros had gone, and their equipment had puffed out in smoke.

I hit the level surface. The shadow I cast was shorter now, but black as ink against the desert sand. I looked up at the slopes, and wondered if the girl was watching. She was going to have a long wait ahead of her. It would sear its way into her soul with suffering. But it would give her more calm power than she’d ever had before in her life. That’s the way of the desert, but she hadn’t learned it yet.

The men strung out behind me. Once or twice they tried to close the distance, but I kept ahead of them. They found I could foot it as fast as they could, faster if necessary.

I knew how they were, panting from their run, worried, anxious, perspiring; and perspiration makes for thirst. I had kept going just fast enough to keep my muscles limbered up, but I wasn’t sweating. We who have lived long in the desert learn not to sweat much. It’s one of the first lessons the desert teaches.

And I headed right up the rim of the desert, skirting the mountains, headed for the land of poison springs. I kept a pace that would press them to the limit, keep them sweating.

My stomach told me it needed food, and my throat was parched. But I’ve lived a long time in the desert, and I’ve been hungry and thirsty before. And there’s this much to be said for traveling on an empty stomach — it’s better than to try and make time right after a full meal. The processes of digestion make for an acid condition that doesn’t help thirst.

We traveled, and we must have presented a strange sight to the night prowling coyotes that looked us over from the shadows cast by sage clumps. One man, pushing on ahead fast. Behind him, strung out over the glittering surface of the desert, three straggling shapes, that were put to it to keep the pace.

There wasn’t any running now, trying to catch up and overpower me. It was a straight question of pushing themselves to the limit to keep me in sight.

We reeled off the miles as well as we could with the loose footing. It was hard work, tiring work, soul wearying work.

Daylight rimmed the jagged crests of The Last Chance Mountains, and I took a bearing on the ranges. We were getting toward the country I wanted to hit, and it was a bad country, a tumbled mass of barren slopes, arsenic springs, water that would rot out a man’s insides.

The country was stained with colored rock outcroppings, strata of vivid soil, and strange conglomerates. The men behind me were all in, and I was keeping the pace myself only by an effort. I looked behind and one of them frantically waved a white handkerchief.

I thought of the girl on the hill, and pushed on. I would have no truce with the trio of crooks. It was whole hog or nothing as far as I was concerned.

The colors to the east went through a swift range of vivid beauty, but my eyes were on the desert, watching every step, figuring distances and my strength.

The land of poison springs was ahead.

The sun came up over the range and the rays threw instant heat. It was going to be a day when the heat would shrivel a man’s soul inside of his skin. I knew the men behind me were sweating now, tired, almost at the point of dropping. One of them was limping badly.

I knew what would affect them worse than travel now.

I picked a bit of shade to the west of a clump of mesquite and stopped. They pressed on eagerly. I got going. After a few hundred yards, I tried it again. This time they had the idea. They stopped. They were glad of the rest. After a minute or two, one of them came toward me. I started moving. I would have no conversation with them, would not let them get within talking distance.

From time to time I watched them.

One of the men had been carrying my gun and belt thrown over his shoulder. I’d noticed that when the first streaks of dawn gave me light. Now he didn’t seem to have it. He’d thrown it away as so much dead weight.

The desert was as sizzling hot as the business side of a frying pan now, and the men were desperate. Fear gripped them. They didn’t know the location of the nearest roads, probably hadn’t even kept their directions well enough to know the route we’d taken.

I had ceased to be their enemy. I was the only guide they could get to lead them to water.

I pushed out in a great swinging circle.

They were too panicky and too green to even note what was taking place. They followed blindly.

I hit their tracks after a while, and pushed back along them. Green as they were, they knew what was taking place then, and the fear that surged up in their breasts sent them running toward me, waving their hands and yelling.

I broke into a jog trot.

We ran in the baking sunlight, ran for two hundred yards, which is a good run in the desert, even when a man is fresh — and we had been pressing ourselves all night.

I came to it then, that which meant a great saving of my strength, the gun and belt which one of the men had been wearing as additional protection, the old six-gun which had pounded at my hip through all sorts of misfortune and triumph.

They had thrown it away as excess weight, and they hadn’t bothered, even, to take out the shells and throw them away. It hadn’t occurred to them that I would double back.

That was one trump which the desert had put into my hand. Slowly but surely I was winning. The very desert herself was taking part, and the men realized in a surge of black panic just what they were up against, just why I’d doubled back.

V. Desert Torture

I took another circle, and headed back for the country of the poison springs.

They followed, plodding, desperately tired, their muscles aching.

I picked a place where I could watch the back trail and flung myself on my side to rest. They dropped without argument. The rest seemed almost as welcome to them as water would have seemed.

I chuckled.

That rest would finish things.

It was hard on my muscles, and years in the desert have dried my muscles to fine strings of sinew on which there is no fat, and in which there is little surplus moisture.

But these men were from the city. Booze gangsters, gunfighters, soft livers. Bah!

Half an hour of rest and their tortured muscles would cramp under the gruelling fatigue. I gave them that half hour. Then I got to my feet and started out at top speed.

All three of them limped now.

The time had dried the exudations from the broken blisters on their feet, had set the tortured muscles into stiffness, had made their joints as rusted hinges.

I had all the trumps now.

And the country of the poison springs was just ahead.

There’s arsenic in the desert, lots of it, and, every once in a while, the water spurts out in the arsenic country. The result may be deadly springs from which an emanation of death surges upward in such gaseous clouds that birds flying over the water will drop dead. Or the water may be discolored and coat the rocks in the bed of the purling stream with a black slime that spells “death” even to the uninitiated. Or the water may be pure and clear to the eye, slightly wrong as to taste, but deadly as to the effect.

The country toward which I was heading had all of the three sorts of springs. And, interspersed, here and there, was some good water.

I led them first to a spring that didn’t need the sign that was over it to warn them. It was a spring the water of which oozed a deadly gas. The bed of the rivulet which trickled down for a hundred yards, before the greedy sand swallowed it was jet black, and slimy.

The government surveyors had placed a warning sign over it:

I walked to this spring, apparently surprised to find the sign, then I walked away. They caught the glint of water, and came up on the run, eagerly flinging their arms toward the sky, shouting hoarsely in their eager gratification at the purling stream.

Then their nostrils caught the odor. Their eyes read the sign. They paused, crushed, disappointed. They were almost insane with the black despair which surged up in their souls. For these were city men. And each man can face the form of death he has accustomed himself to face. But show him death in a suddenly sinister and strange form, and panic grips him. That is why the thought of a horrible death in the midst of this confused mass of jumbled hills and barren mountains caused them such fear.

I swung in a circle. They stayed by the poisoned spring, arguing. One of them even bent to taste the water and the fumes slumped him over. The others dragged him back.

I waited until they came after me once more, stumbling, staggering, every ounce of spirit gone from their craven souls. They were almost insane with the strain of it all.

I swung once more in a circle and walked back to the poison spring. They couldn’t get the idea, and they stood on a hill to watch me. Then they got the thought that maybe I was going to drink the water, after all. If it was safe for me it would be safe for them. I knew the desert. They didn’t.

But I waited until a little rise hid them, and took the sign from the edge of the spring, the sign which marked it as poison. And then I started out of the little cañon where the spring was located, going on a half run.

They did what I thought they would do, what their fatigued muscles demanded that they should do, cut over the ridge to save themselves the extra yardage of climb. They didn’t go near the spring itself.

I had all the trumps. It only was necessary to play them.

I climbed the divide. There was a sweet water spring just over the summit of the first ridge. It was a cold, clear spring, bordered with moist sand, and a fringe of vegetation.

I ran to it, dropped on my hands and knees where the moist sand would hold the imprint of my tracks, and drank. And I was careful not to drink more than a swallow or two. It was agony to tear my face away, but I know the deadly cramps that come from drinking too much water when one has tasted the hot torture of the desert’s thirst.

Then I moved over to the other side of the little stream, and planted the sign that I’d taken from the other spring. I put it in some of the green stuff so it wouldn’t show to casual observation.

Then I went on.

From the shelter of a rock outcropping, I watched them come over the crest in a stumbling run, watched them as they saw my tracks going toward the stream, and the fringe of cool greenery that broke the eye torture of the glaring sands.

They saw where I had knelt down and placed my face to the water, and they plunged their own red faces down into the cool depths, gulped, strangled, sputtered and gulped again. There was no one to tell them to take it easy. They simply let their appetites dictate their actions. It was the way they were accustomed to live.

I waited, watched.

It wouldn’t be long until the cramps would claim them. They had made hogs of themselves, and Nature would have her way.

They finally finished their mad orgy of first draughts, and looked casually around them, searching for me. I had led them to water now, and I had ceased to be something they needed. They would shoot on sight.

They would have gone after more of the water, when they had finished their inspection, had not the eyes of Fargo chanced to light on the sign.

He stared at it with unbelieving eyes.

Then he shouted, an inarticulate shout that conveyed meaning more by the note of panic in his voice than by the words. He pointed his finger.

The others saw the sign.

Then, as their minds concentrated on their stomachs, seeking the first sign of alarming symptoms, the preliminary spasms of cramp became noticeable.

Fargo pressed his hands to his stomach. The color drained from his sunbaked face. His eyes were wide with fear. Osgood stared incredulously, then slowly twisted his torso, rolled over and tried to retch the water from his system.

As well have tried to coax moisture from a blotter.

His parched tissues had swelled under the moisture which had entered his stomach, and it was that very absorption which was causing the sudden pains which now gripped them all.

I chose that moment to stand erect against the sky.

They didn’t see me.

I came down the slope, my gun holstered at my side, my hands swinging free. The first they knew of my presence was when I spoke.

“Good Heavens!” I said. “You didn’t drink it?”

They stared at me.

Fargo snapped out words in between moans.

“You drank it!”

“Not a drop. I only bent and cooled my face in it. It’s not like the other. It doesn’t send off a gas, and you can touch your skin to it. But it’s sure death to drink it. There’s a good spring over the hill. I drank there. I only cooled my face here.”

They stared with utter incredulity.

“I’m dying!” said Osgood. He said it in the tone of voice which one would reserve for some great cataclysm. Like so many killers who have accustomed themselves to killing under such circumstances that the other man stands no chance, these gangster gunmen had always been certain of victory before they would enter battle. That was why they were so arrogant. Now, brought face to face with impending death, they thought that the whole scheme of things had gone awry, that God had stepped down from heaven, and that the world was ending.

I grinned at them.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve all got to die sometime. I hate to think of what’s on your souls. Personally, I’d hate to take such a load into eternity with me. When my time comes, I hope that...”

Osgood, the killer, was Osgood the whiner. He interrupted me with a plea for mercy, as though I could have spared his life or washed his craven soul free from sin.

I shrugged my shoulders, turned my back as though to walk away. I thought that would bring home a more vivid realization of their predicament — to have me walk calmly away and leave them to their torture.

I was almost too late in remembering those with whom I had to deal. They were sneaks and cowards. They were the type of men who shot from ambush. They were accustomed to line their sights on a man’s back.

I whirled.

Osgood, his face drawn into a spasm of hatred, his sneaking soul grasping at the opportunity for a mean revenge, had his gun halfway from the holster. Those gangsters were undoubtedly fast with a gun.

Out in the desert men learn to use a gun as a tool of the trade. Many the time a rattler has to be shot with a snapping motion of the wrist before the foot descends. Many a time a man has to take a snap shot at a running rabbit when his belt buckle is pushing against his ribs.

I snapped out my gun.

Osgood doubtless thought he was unbeatable on the draw. City dwellers get some strange ideas, and then, again, man is ever prone to judge his worth, not from any fixed standard of merit, but purely from the comparison he can make with competition.

There was staring incredulity on Osgood’s face as my gun was the first to spit fire, and the automatic’s explosion came a fraction of a second after my slug had torn into his forearm, spun him half around.

The automatic dropped from his hand. He stared at me, then at the bleeding arm. His left hand clutched at the wound, the fingers gripped around the arm.

Carl Rankin, his own gun out, stared at me, met my eyes, and dropped the gun.

“The trouble with you city gangsters,” I told them, “is that you’re too accustomed to shooting in the back.”

Fargo came toward me, staggering a tentative step or two.

“Save me! Save me! You know the desert. You know what to do. There must be something! I can’t die like this. I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”

They were a sorry spectacle. The three who had been swaggering about, talking of making us dig our own graves, gloating over the mine and the good fortune which had come to them. Now they were staggering about, whining and whimpering.

The sun and the blue vault of clean sky looked down upon them, and must have laughed at the manner in which the self-assurance of these mortals had evaporated.

I came over, picked up the guns, tossed them into the water.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing that can be done. You’ll have cramps for about half an hour. They gradually increase in violence. After that the pain isn’t quite so severe. That’s when the nerves are getting paralyzed. As the pains quit you can prepare to make your peace with whatever sort of God gangsters like you worship.”

I seemed so utterly indifferent about it that my very indifference made them wail the louder with self-sympathy. Fargo ripped cloth from his shirt and tied up Osgood’s arm. Between spasms of cramps they condoled with each other, glowered at me.

I smoked a cigarette.

“I’ll wait until you die,” I told them. “Not that there’s anything I can do, but it’ll be company for you.”

Rankin sneered a reply. “Don’t let us delay you!”

I smiled paternally at him. “It won’t be long.” I looked at Fargo. “Of course there’s one thing that might make a difference,” I said casually.

“How do you mean, a difference?” he asked.

I regarded the smoking tip of my cigarette.

“If you didn’t drink too much of the water, there’s an antidote that the Indians use. If you felt like signing a confession of what you’ve done, and admitting that the claim is the girl’s, I might be able to help you.”

They stared at me with incredulous eyes and fear-grayed faces. They had been staring certain death in the face, and now I gave them a hope of life.

Without a word Fargo got out a fountain pen and a notebook. He scrawled the confession, stopping his writing twice to double with cramps. They were caused in part by the water, in part by the suggestion of the poison sign.

Osgood and Rankin clamored to get in on it. They yammered to sign their names, babbled pleas for mercy. I remained cold and aloof until they had finished the confession; all three signed it. I glanced it over, saw that it was sufficient, made them ink their fingers and impress their inked fingertips over the sheet, giving it an absolute authenticity.

Then I gave them the “remedy.” It was the first thing that came to my mind.

“Eat the leaves of the plants that are growing by the fringe of the stream. Then lie down flat and scoop up the surface sand that’s warmed by the sun and pour it on your stomachs and abdomens, putting it right next to the skin. When it loses its warmth, get more hot sand.”

“Will that cure us?” asked Fargo.

“That,” I promised him, “will cure you.”

I started up the slope.

Fifty yards away I paused and looked back.

A bullet zinged past my head. Rankin had retrieved his gun from the stream, shaken the water out of its mechanism, and fired. Fargo also had his gun. Honor among thieves? Maybe — but not in that crowd. I snapped up my gun. They scurried for cover like rabbits. They had seen something of my accuracy with my weapon, and didn’t want to see more.

I dropped over the ridge. They didn’t follow. They were “saving their lives.” The warmth of the sand would help, and the suggestion of chewing the leaves would also help.

It would undo the harm that the planted sign had done.

I hit for the north.

It was noon before I struck a branch road. There was a speck of dust off to the left — a car, coming my way. I built a fire, put on some greenery, took my coat and made the smoke column into signalling puffs.

A man who was green to the desert would have ignored the Indian telegraph. But, as the dust speck grew larger and disclosed the little black dot of an automobile scurrying along at the head of it, I could see that the driver was a desert man. He swung from the road and started grinding his car over the surface of the desert. I ran down the slope to meet him.

He was a desert prospector, one of the type who prospects in an automobile and knows his stuff. The car was battered as to body. The paint that remained was checked and scaling under the effects of scouring sand and desert sun, but the motor ran like a watch.

The car was light enough to go over the surface of sand, and had great oversize tires, only partially inflated, giving it lots of traction.

He looked me over. “Huh!” he said, and reached for the canteen.

“You could dig me out some cold grub,” I told him. “And I’ve got an interest in a claim all staked out for you. You drive and I’ll eat and talk. Head down the Eureka Valley. You’ll be rich by dusk.”

He looked me over, opened the door of the car.

“Get in,” he said. “There’s part of a cold haunch of venison in the center of the blanket roll in back, where it’ll keep cool.”

I dug into the blankets. The car ground into motion, snarling its way over the desert. After fifteen minutes, my eyes caught sight of three specks outlined against the sky on the top of a long ridge. The three specks were running, signaling, waving their hands.

The prospector was at the wheel, his faculties concentrated on driving. He didn’t see them. I didn’t tell him. Maybe they got out — back to their city warrens. Maybe not. I don’t think it would matter much to the world.

We covered the ground I’d walked over at fast time. It was a good car, and one that was accustomed to desert work. We picked up the girl in the late afternoon. She had suffered some from thirst, and she was weak from hunger. But she gulped the warm water from the canteen, gnawed at some venison, and grinned at me.

“Did you hear the desert talk early this morning?” she asked.

“I was busy,” I told her. “Did the sand whisper?”

She nodded solemnly.

“I think... I think it does say words, sometimes,” she said.

The old prospector, a four days’ growth of gray stubble on his chin, nodded his head in agreement.

“You’re dog-gone tootin’ it does,” he said.

But we didn’t ask her what the desert had said. Out in the vast spaces of sand and sun each person has the right to think his own thoughts in his own manner.

The desert is a cruel mother, but she’s kind to those who know her. And that lonely vigil had left its mark upon Vera Camm. There was a poise, a calm patience, a steadiness of purpose about her... The mark that the desert leaves upon those whom it mothers.