Whispering Sands: Stories of Gold Fever and the Western Desert

I Cool Reception

The house was a magnificent palace. It sat back from the streets, surrounded by fresh green grass which was kept moist by fountains of spray that spouted up from a buried water system.

There were great shade trees around the house, furnishing rich patches of green color against the stucco of the walls, forming deep pools of inviting shade beneath them.

I felt out of place as I looked around at the shade and the grass. Grass is something we don’t have in the desert. It seems an awful waste of water somehow to have all this water cascading over a lawn just because it looks pretty.

I was halfway up the stairs and wondering whether a butler would hold out a silver platter for me to put a card on, when the door flung open and Pete Ringley himself stood in the doorway.

He was heavier than when I’d seen him last, and the fat was a moist, well-nourished, puffy fat that made his face look round and plump, like the breast of a picked goose.

“Bob Zane!” he shouted, and then came galloping across the porch to slam me between the shoulders with a hand that had lost nothing of its strength. “The same as you were seven years ago!” he said. “You haven’t changed a particle. You haven’t aged a day. You look hard and fit, as though you could start out for Death Valley with nothing but a burro, a canteen of water, a sack of beans and a roll of blankets.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Of course I could,” I said. “What else would I want?”

He laughed and whacked me between the shoulders again. “Come on in,” he said. “I was looking out of the window when the taxicab drove up. I saw you get out, and couldn’t believe my eyes for a minute. Lord! but it’s good to see you again.”

I followed him into the house and didn’t say much.

“Well,” he said, as he paused in the doorway of the living room, “what do you think about it?”

“It doesn’t look much like the old cabin down in the cottonwoods,” I told him.

He laughed at that, but there was something wistful in his laugh.

A door opened and a woman entered the room. She was young, stylish, tailored, manicured, hairdressed, massaged, powdered, perfumed and lipsticked, and her fingernails had been painted.

“Dearest,” said Pete Ringley, “I want you to meet the best friend I have in the world — Bob Zane. Bob, this is Evelyn — the wife.”

I started to shake hands, then remembered something I’d read somewhere about a man not shaking hands until a woman offered him hers.

She didn’t offer me hers.

Pete Ringley kept on talking. “Bob Zane,” he said, “was my partner out there in the desert when we struck it rich. Lord! what a battle we had with those claim jumpers. Bob is the fellow that saved my life. I’ve told you about it, dearest.”

“Lots of times,” she said in a voice that was without interest.

Pete Ringley laughed again. “We sold out our claim that spring,” he said. “Two hundred thousand dollars cash was what we got.”

He looked over at me, and there was the glitter of a lighter in his eyes. “I always wanted to come back to civilization,” he said, “and let my money make money for me. I had my boy, George, you know. I thought he needed a father’s care. I came on East, and my money made lots of money for me. And then I met Evelyn and married her.”

Evelyn Ringley looked me over coolly.

“What did you do with your money, Mr. Zane?” she asked tonelessly.

Pete Ringley laughed booming merriment and answered the question for me.

“Blew it in!” he said. “Went down to Los Angeles and blew it all in, and then went back to the desert to look for more.”

She looked at me as though I had been a specimen of something that was under glass.

“And I never was so tired of money in my life,” I told Pete. “I can remember how fed up I was when I got down to the last twenty-five thousand dollars. I went through that in a week and it was the longest week I ever put in.”

“Why didn’t you save it?” Evelyn Ringley asked.

“I don’t want money, ma’am,” I told her. “I want the desert. I want the making of money. I want the thrill of fighting; the adventure of searching; the big spaces of the outdoors.”

“I’m quite sure,” she said icily, “that you’re entirely welcome to them. Are you going to be long, Pete?”

Pete looked a little flabbergasted.

She turned and left the room. Pete put a hand on my shoulder.

“No, ma’am,” I called as she went through the door, “he won’t be long.”

“Don’t mind her,” Pete said. “She is a city girl. All of her interests are in the city. She doesn’t understand anything else.”

She was ten years younger than Pete, maybe fifteen — it’s hard to tell. There wasn’t a wrinkle or a line on her face. It was all smooth, as though it had been molded and then plastered over with some kind of a pink plaster so it wouldn’t crack or weather.

“Where’s your bag?” said Pete Ringley. “You’ve got to stay here for a week anyway. You can’t go back...”

“In about an hour, Pete.” I told him. “This isn’t my country.”

There was genuine disappointment on his face.

“Oh, listen,” he said, “I haven’t seen you since we signed the deed to the mine. We’ve got to have a little celebration, just for old times’ sake.”

I grinned at him and shook my head. “Where can we talk?” I asked.

He led the way to a room on the second floor.

“This is my den,” he said. “No one ever disturbs me here.”

It was a comfortable room. There were a few relics of the old days scattered around — a pair of alforjas, with some of the hide pretty badly worn, where the pack ropes had rubbed. There was a battered Stetson, with a sweat-grimed band, a hat that had absorbed so much sunlight and desert dust it had turned gray like the desert. There were an old riata, a gold pan and a shovel that was covered with gilt paint and tied with a ribbon.

I looked at the shovel.

“That was the shovel,” he said, “that we turned over the first gold of our bonanza with.”

“Why the gilt paint,” I asked, “and the ribbon?”

“That was Evelyn’s idea,” he said. “She thought it should be decorated somehow. She said that it had brought her gold, so we should put gold paint on it.”

I didn’t say anything. Pete looked uncomfortable.

“Of course,” he said, “it sort of takes away the charm of the thing, but Evelyn wanted to have her way about it, and she’s a city girl. She knows what’s proper in such matters.”

“Yes,” I said, “she’s a city girl.”

I looked at the woodwork of the den. It was a peculiar light color. It looked comfortable and weatherbeaten.

“Like it?” he asked.

I nodded.

I went over and felt of it. It looked like the old driftwood that would be found around the washes in the desert where cloudbursts had carried it along for a mile or two, and then the sand had blown across it.

“What kind of wood is it?” I asked.

“It’s the way it’s treated, Bob,” he told me. “It’s given a sand blast.”

“A what?”

“A sand blast. They blow sand against the wood through a nozzle. The sand is sent out under pressure. It cuts the wood, and then they wax the surface. It gives it that weatherbeaten appearance.”

I nodded and kept my hand on the wood. It seemed to give me something to tie to, something that I could understand.

“I came to see you about the old Chuckwalla claims,” I said.

He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t remember any Chuckwalla claims,” he said.

“You remember the time that the burro stepped on the canteen, and—”

“Why,” he said, “that stuff wasn’t any good!”

“It is now,” I told him.

He looked at me curiously.

“There’s been a big change in the desert,” I told him. “The price of gold is going up. What’s more, it’s easier to get transportation now than it was. Those Chuckwalla claims were low-grade, but they were uniform in gold content. There’s all kind of rock in there. With the increased price in gold and the chance to get at them, it’s one of the biggest propositions we’ve ever tackled.”

“Why,” he said, “I’d clean forgotten about those! As I remember it, I threw the samples away.”

“No,” I told him, “we didn’t throw them away; Sally Ehlers got them.”

His face lit up. “That’s right,” he said. “Sally was there. That was the time we found the kid out in the desert. Her dad had been killed. She’d taken the wrong road and run out of gas. What was she — around thirteen or fourteen, wasn’t she? Just a kid.”

“She isn’t a kid any more,” I told him. “She’s grown up. She’s a young woman. She put herself through business college, got a job as a stenographer in a law office, and then went out to Blythe and became a notary public. She does stenographic work and notary public stuff. She’s got the desert in her blood; she can’t keep away from it.”

He looked moodily meditative.

“Gosh,” he said, “it makes me feel old to think that that kid has grown up. Remember what an impulsive little kid she was?”

I nodded.

“She remembers where the claims were,” I said.

“Well,” he told me, “what about it?”

“I think we’d better go out and relocate them,” I said.

He shook his head.

“I’m finished with the desert, Bob,” he said. “It’s cruel.”

I looked him over.

“It’s not cruel,” I said. “It’s kind.”

His laugh was scornful and bitter.

“Kind!” he exclaimed. “My God, Bob! Have you forgotten the burning heat of those suns? The shimmering sand that bums up through your boots until the soles of your feet blister? Have you forgotten those days when you can cook an egg simply by putting it out in the sun and leaving it for five minutes? The days when the air is just like the breath out of a furnace, when the moisture dries right out of your blood and your muscles shrivel? Have you forgotten those awful desert winds? The bitter cold of the winter nights? The everlasting sand? The rattlesnakes? The Gila monsters? The tarantulas? The centipedes? The scorpions? My God! It’s so cruel that even the bushes have to grow thorns in order to protect themselves, and nature coats their leaves with some kind of a resinous substance. If it wasn’t for that the water would evaporate right out of them!”

I shook my head at him and smiled.

“No,” I said, “I haven’t forgotten those things. I just came from the desert, Pete. But that’s why the desert is so kind. It’s cruel to those that don’t understand it; to the person who can understand her moods she’s a kind and loving mother. There’s nothing that develops character like cruelty, and the development of character is all life is for.”

He shuddered.

“Lord!” he said. “I hate to think of it. Honestly, Bob, I was more than a year getting enough moisture in my muscles so that I could look good in a dinner coat. I was all stringy and shriveled like a mummy. No, Bob, I’m done with the desert. If you can make anything out of those claims, go ahead and do it. I’ve built up quite a fortune making investments, and right now I’m in the middle of a business deal that is going to more than double my fortune.”

“I’d like to have you go back with me,” I told him. “Perhaps when you got back to the desert you’d feel a little bit differently toward it. You used to get along pretty well in the desert.”

He shuddered and shook his head.

“I couldn’t stand it, Bob,” he said.

There were lurching steps outside the door. The knob rattled.

Pete Ringley frowned.

“No one disturbs me in here,” he said.

The words had just left his lips when the door opened and a young man entered the room.

He was big and tall. He hadn’t filled out yet, but he was enough like his father so I knew him at a glance. This was the “kid” that Pete had always talked about around the campfires; the kid that Pete had determined to send through college; the kid who was going to have the advantages of all the education that his father had missed.

I looked at him. He was drunk.

He wasn’t offensively drunk; it was just the type of drunk that comes from taking two or three drinks on top of a hangover. The eyes were moist and watery; the skin was a rich pinkish red, as though he had been putting hot and cold towels on his face after he shaved, trying to get his nerves steady. His hair was glossy and black, and it swept back in waves that were as glossy as the wing of a blackbird. The waves were too regular, too artificial. It looked as though some one had put them in with a hot iron.

Pete frowned.

“I’m busy, George,” he said.

George grinned easily.

“That’s what Evelyn said,” he told him. “But she said that she didn’t think it was anything important — nothing that you cared about particularly.”

Pete flushed.

“George,” he said, “shake hands with Bob Zane. Bob Zane was my old desert partner.”

George Ringley gave me a hand that was cool and just a little flabby.

“How’re yuh?”

I squeezed the hand a bit, just to see if there would be any resistance. It was like squeezing a dead trout.

George pulled his hand away and looked at it.

“Big he-man stuff — outdoor man — wide open spaces and all that, eh?” he asked.

Pete Ringley scowled at him, and there was a look of hopeless resignation on his face.

“What is it, George?” he asked.

“Got to see you, guv’nor, before I go out. Got to see you within the next hour. It’s important as hell.”

Pete stared steadily at him.

“I presume,” he said, “that you’re in some kind of a jam over money matters, and that you think it’s important as the devil I should come to your rescue. Is that it?”

George smiled at me.

“The guv’nor,” he said, “is a great student of character. He should have been a detective.”

He grinned at his father.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you know how those things are, Dad. You were young once yourself.”

“I’ll see you sometime this afternoon,” Pete Ringley said.

“It’s got to be within an hour, guv’nor,” George told him; then, as he saw only ominous silence stamped upon his father’s face, he smiled affably at me. “Be seeing more of you, Zane,” he said.

When the door had closed I looked at Pete Ringley.

Pete’s face was apologetic.

“Don’t misjudge him, Bob,” he pleaded. “He’s an awfully good boy, an awfully good boy. But, you know, his mother died when he was five. I was out in the desert prospecting around, scraping up a little money here and there to send back to keep him in school. Then we struck it rich and I put him through college. He had the best that money could buy. Perhaps I indulged him a little too much. I was trying to make up to him for the years that he hadn’t had enough.”

“What college did he go to?” I asked.

“Harvard,” he said. “Why?”

I tapped the woodwork.

“Why didn’t you send him to your old college?” I asked.

“My college?” asked Pete. “Why, Bob, you know I never had any college.”

I tapped the woodwork again.

“The same college,” I said, “that took this cheap wood and made something distinctive out of it — the college of drifting sand.”

He looked at me for a moment before he got the idea, then he laughed nervously, and his eyes didn’t meet mine.

“He’s a good kid,” he said, and jabbed his finger against a push button.

“We’re going to have a highball, Bob,” he said. “I’ve got some genuine uncut whiskey.”

II The Snatch

I had told Evelyn Ringley that I wouldn’t detain her husband long, and I kept my promise to her. Exactly fifty-seven minutes from the time Pete had met me on the porch, he was saying good-by to me. There were tears in his eyes and he was sorry to see me go, but he hadn’t urged me forcibly to stay. It was plain that his wife thought I wouldn’t mix in well with some of the guests who were coming in during the latter part of the afternoon to play bridge.

Poor Pete was in something of a daze. It seemed strange to him that his old partner would come on to see him and leave within less than an hour. Yet he realized as well as I did, perhaps better, that there was nothing else I could do.

I wouldn’t let him send the liveried chauffeur and the family sedan down to the depot. I insisted that he call a cab.

The cab started away with a lurch, and had gone about a hundred yards when a light gray roadster came tearing down the driveway from the big house.

George Ringley was at the wheel. The car gathered speed and swept past us at better than fifty miles an hour.

George saw me and slammed on the brakes. The big car swayed slightly. The tires screeched a protest. George gave the wheel a deft twist, sending the roadster up close to the cab.

“Didn’t know you were going so soon!” he shouted.

I nodded.

“Get out,” he said, “and I’ll take you wherever you want to go and get you there in half the time.”

I grinned and shook my head at him.

“No,” I said, “thanks all the same. I prefer the cab. I’m nervous about automobiles.”

His smile was humorous and patronizing. He looked on me as some wild outlander. He was still drunk — not dead drunk, but just pleasantly oiled. His face wore a grin of complacent self-satisfaction, and I gathered that the interview with his father, which had taken place a few moments before I left, had been entirely satisfactory to the young man.

“Okay,” he called. “Good luck.”

His foot pressed down on the throttle. The car shot ahead like a frightened jackrabbit and left the taxicab rattling and swaying, as though it had been standing still.

The cabdriver shook his head dubiously.

There was a traffic signal at the corner, where a through boulevard crossed the one we were on. George Ringley went through the red light just as it was changing. An officer blew vigorous blasts on his whistle. Ringley didn’t pay any attention to it at all.

A black Cadillac sedan came up from behind, traveling fast. I looked at it casually, wondering if every automobile in the city traveled at such a terrific rate of speed. There were four men in the sedan. As it swept past, I saw that the rear license plate was loose, dangling and flapping in the breeze which sucked up from behind the car.

Just before it got to the corner, the metal license plate came loose and dropped to the curb, where it skidded along for some ten or fifteen feet.

The traffic officer blew his whistle and held up his hand.

The big Cadillac didn’t stop at once. It looked as though the driver was going to make a run for it. The officer was mad by this time. He reached for his hip. The Cadillac stopped. The officer pointed to the license and said something. The signal was against us and we had stopped. I saw the driver jump from the car, run to the license, saw him exchange a few words with the cop, then pull out his card case and show something to the officer.

“His driving license,” said the cabdriver in response to my question.

The traffic light changed. We went on across the intersection and passed the black Cadillac, but within a block it passed us, and by that time it must have been going sixty miles an hour.

I saw something as the car passed me the second time which I hadn’t noticed the first time. There was a peculiar hole in the front fender of the car. It was the kind of a hole which would have been made by a steel-jacketed bullet.

I wondered about that hole. It looked as though some one had shot at a tire, and the bullet had glanced, then torn its way up through the fender. The license plate was bolted on now. They’d done a hurried job. I wondered why they were in such a hurry.

The boulevard they were following ran along for a couple of miles through a sparsely settled district given over largely to golf and country clubs. Then the road swung into a densely populated district once more. It was the best shortcut to the depot. Pete Ringley had built his house out in the exclusive section, where he had plenty of elbow room and was within easy walking distance of the country clubs. People in that section paid more attention to clubs than to offices.

The cabdriver jammed the brakes on hard.

“Look over there,” he said.

I looked.

The roadster George Ringley had been driving was in the ditch. The fender on one side was badly crumpled. The car rested on its side. One of the front wheels was still turning, barely moving, but turning, nevertheless.

“Stop the car!” I shouted to the cabdriver.

He had it stopped by the time I had wrenched the door open. I got out and looked around the wreck. There was no trace of George Ringley. He had vanished, apparently, into thin air. I looked the seat over. There was no sign of blood. The windshield was cracked. The car had evidently skidded into the ditch. I looked the fenders over once more. They were crumpled, and on one of them was a smear of black, as though it had collided with some object that had been painted black and had scraped off part of the enamel.

“What do you suppose happened?” asked the cabdriver at my elbow.

“Too much speed,” I told him. “He skidded into the ditch. Some car came along and he picked up a ride in it. Let’s go.”

The driver looked the roadster over and nodded.

“I’ll say one thing,” he said, “he didn’t lose any time.”

“Oh, he may have been five minutes ahead of us,” I told him. “Let’s get to the depot.”

The cabdriver shrugged his shoulders. After all, it was no affair of his. I reentered the cab and we drove to the depot without incident. I paid off the cab, entered a telephone booth and called Pete Ringley. I had some little difficulty getting Pete on the telephone. There was a butler or valet, or something, who wanted to know all about me. Finally I heard Pete’s voice.

“Pete,” I said, “George passed me in a roadster. I was in the taxicab. We got a mile or so down the boulevard and saw George’s roadster in the ditch. George wasn’t anywhere around. Have you heard anything from him?”

He hemmed and hawed and hesitated.

“Come on,” I said, “out with it.”

He lowered his voice. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve heard, Bob, but I can’t tell you over the telephone.”

“Sure you can,” I told him. “What is it? Is the boy hurt?”

“Not hurt, Bob,” he said, “he’s been snatched.”

“Been what?” I asked.

“Snatched,” he said; “kidnaped. It’s a new racket that’s sweeping the country. I suppose I should have anticipated something like this. I’m supposed to be a very wealthy man. George is an only child. They telephoned just a minute ago and told me to get fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills if I ever wanted to see my boy again. I wasn’t certain that it was on the square, but if you saw the car I guess it is.”

“You’re notifying the police?” I asked.

“Good Lord, no!” he said. “That’s one thing I don’t dare to do! They told me that if I notified the police or said anything about it, the boy would be killed instantly.”

“Suppose they meant it?” I asked.

“Of course they meant it,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Get the money, of course. I can get more fifty-thousand-dollar-cash stakes, but I can’t get another boy. Money doesn’t mean a single damn thing at a time like this. It’s a question of getting my boy back.”

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Don’t say anything about it. I can get the money without attracting any attention. I’ve got four or five times that much on deposit in banks here in the city. Naturally, I’m worried, but worrying isn’t going to help any, and if they knew I told a soul it might be bad for George. That’s why I’m telling you, Bob, because I know I can trust you, and I want you to keep the information under your hat.”

“I’ll keep in touch with you,” I said, “and see how you come out.”

“You won’t need to,” he told me. “As soon as George is returned the newspapers will have the story and then the police will start trying to trace the kidnapers. It’ll be in big headlines all over the country then. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t call up, Bob, because I want to keep the line clear for communication with the men who have George. They’re going to tell me where to take the money.”

“How soon will you have it?” I asked.

“The money?”

“Yes.”

“I can get it within a couple of hours,” he said.

“Okay,” I told him. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“So do I,” he said, “but there’s nothing any one can do. It’s simply a question of raising ransom and raising it fast. And I’m not going to make the mistake of taking a single soul into my confidence. The authorities always bungle cases like this.”

I expressed my sympathy once more and hung up the telephone. My train was due to leave in half an hour, but I didn’t bother about it. I got my bag from a checking stand, went to the lavatories, took out my big six-gun, with the shiny leather holster, black and polished from much exposure to sun and wind, and strapped it around my waist underneath my coat. I knew there was some sort of a law against it, but I didn’t care particularly. I had a hunch and I was going to play it.

I got a taxi and made time back to the intersection, where the cop was still on duty. I got out and walked toward the cop.

He saw me coming and surveyed me frowningly.

“You’ve got some information that I want,” I told him, pulling a ten-dollar bill from my pocket.

He looked at me and at the ten-dollar bill, and his expression was uncordial.

“It’s okay,” I told him, “not only something that you can give out, but something that you should give out in connection with your duty.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I was driving a car,” I said, “when a Cadillac sedan bumped me. At the time I didn’t think it had done any damage. I thought my rear bumper had taken care of it. But when I got home I found that the gasoline tank had been punctured. Now that sedan dropped its license plate when it got to the corner, and you took a look at the operator’s license of the fellow that was driving it. Do you remember the name?”

“So that’s how that license plate got loose,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “He sideswiped me as he went past.”

“Why didn’t you say something about it?”

“I didn’t think any damage was done.”

He pulled out his notebook and thumbed the pages.

“I think,” he said, “the name was Watson. Yes, here it is — Carol P. Watson. And the address is seven four nine three Ridgeway Drive.”

I passed him the ten-dollar bill.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Just a matter of accommodation. I’m glad to do it for you.”

I didn’t say anything, but kept the ten-dollar bill poked at him, and he took it without making any further protestations. I climbed into my cab.

“Seven four nine three Ridgeway Drive,” I said, “and drive like the devil.”

It wasn’t a long run out there — not over fifteen blocks from the place where George Ringley’s car had been forced into the ditch. There was a black Cadillac sedan parked in front of the place, and I saw there was a bullet hole in the fender.

“This the place?” asked the driver.

“Just keep on going,” I said, “until you come to the corner. Stop there for a little while and wait.”

I figured that, knowing the cop had the address which was on the driver’s license, the men probably wouldn’t keep George Ringley there. It was too dangerous. There was always the chance that Pete might notify the police after all, and the traffic officer might have been observant. On the other hand, they’d made all of their plans to use the place as headquarters, and it would take them a little while to get some other place ready.

I waited in the cab for fifteen minutes. Then a man came out of the place on Ridgeway Drive, opened the door of the sedan, got in behind the wheel and started the motor.

A minute later two men came out of the door, waited for a moment and took the arms of a third man. They kept the third man between them. They walked down the driveway and bundled the man into the sedan. The car purred into motion.

I had a glimpse of the man who sat between the two in the rear seat as the sedan went by. The man was George Ringley.

“Follow that Cadillac sedan,” I told the cabdriver. “If you get a chance run alongside of it. I want to talk with some men in there.”

He looked at me curiously, but snapped the car into motion. We ran four blocks before we got a chance to run alongside. The Cadillac was moving slowly, keeping within the traffic regulations. Evidently the men didn’t want to chance being arrested for some minor traffic violation. They’d had a taste of that and didn’t like it.

The taxicab rattled alongside.

“Get over to the curb,” I said. “I want to talk with you.”

The Cadillac speeded up.

As it shot into fast motion, I squinted down the sights of my big six-shooter and pulled the trigger.

The right rear tire went out with a bang. The big car rose and then settled. It skidded around and suddenly came to a stop. The driver opened up on me with a big automatic. One of the men in the back stuck a gun out through the rear of the car.

The automatics were pumping like firecrackers. My big range gun thundered. The driver of the car jerked, twisted and slumped down over the steering wheel. A bullet from the gun in the hands of the man in the rear struck the frame of the door within an inch of my head. I thumbed the hammer of my big .45, and he caught the slug right in the chest.

The taxi driver had jumped to the ground and was sprinting like a deer. The man who sat on the other side of the seat, with a gun on George Ringley, suddenly started to fumble with the catch on the door. George sat motionless. His face was white. The man reached the sidewalk, ran two steps, turned and fired. My bullet caught him in the side of the shoulder, spun him half around. He dropped to the sidewalk, got up to his knees, swayed for a moment, then dropped forward on his face.

George Ringley recognized me. His eyes were as big as teacups. He floundered out of the car.

“Can you drive this cab?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“Get started,” I said, “and make it snappy.”

Windows were up in some of the houses. Some one was screaming for the police. A big fellow, with a bald head and a close-cropped white mustache, appeared in a window with a short-barreled, nickel-plated revolver in his hand. He held it out at arm’s length and emptied the gun. One of the bullets struck the sidewalk in front of the cab; none of them came nearer than ten feet.

“Get started,” I told George Ringley. “You haven’t got all day, you know.”

The cab shot into motion and swayed over as it took the corner. I leaned forward where I could watch George Ringley drive.

“A top-heavy old bus,” he said.

“Take it easy,” I told him, “after you get away from here. We want to escape attention.”

“How did you know?” he asked.

“Never mind that now,” I said, “just keep moving, and watch what you’re doing.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I can pilot this crate. It’s top-heavy, but I can make it all right.”

“Don’t go home,” I said.

“No?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “there are some other members of the gang between us and the house. Go up to the Union Depot.”

“Why the Union Depot?” he asked.

“Don’t argue,” I said. “Get started.”

He swung the car toward the Union Depot. I looked at my watch. It was too late to catch my train.

We came to a boulevard stop.

“Better leave the cab here,” I said. “They’ll be tracing it directly.”

He stopped the car.

“But listen,” he said, “I want to know what it’s all about. Why shouldn’t I telephone—”

“You’re going to do exactly as I tell you,” I said.

“But I want to telephone father.”

“You poor simp!” I said. “Don’t you suppose I telephoned your father?”

His face showed relief.

“When?” he asked.

“Just before I went out and picked you up,” I told him. “Now come on and get busy.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Help in trapping the kidnapers.”

“I’ll sure as hell do that,” he said. “The devils crowded me off the road, then sideswiped me as I went into the ditch. It’s a wonder I wasn’t hurt. They wanted fifty thousand dollars from the guv’nor. Think of it! Fifty thousand dollars!”

I signaled a passing cab which was running along the boulevard.

“Union Depot,” I told him.

I picked up my bag at the Union Depot, chartered another car which took us to the airport.

Half an hour later we were seated in a cabin plane, with the motors warming up.

“I don’t understand,” George Ringley said. “Father couldn’t have known just what you were going to do.”

“Shut up,” I told him. “Don’t ask so many questions. This is all a scheme to bring the kidnapers to justice.”

“It looked to me as though they got plenty of justice,” he said. “My God! You never missed a shot! They fired half a dozen shots to your three, but every one of your three counted.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Quit talking about it.”

The pilot gunned the motors. We ran down a cement runway. The plane tilted as it took off, swayed slightly in a gust of wind, then zoomed upward in a sharp banking turn.

“Where are we headed?” George Ringley shouted.

“Straight west,” I said. “Your father wants you to do a job for him while you’re hiding.”

“Hiding?”

“Yes,” I said, “so they can trap the kidnapers.”

George Ringley shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess it’s okay,” he said in a voice that showed tired resignation, for all of its attempt to make itself audible above the roar of the motors.

He sat back in the comfortable cushioned chair, looking down at the city and the farms of the countryside as it unwound below us like some huge panorama which was being run by clockwork. His eyes closed, and he started to nod his head.

He’d been pretty drunk and the booze was wearing off.

The nose of the plane was pointed toward the desert.

III A Long-Eared Caddy

Few people know very much about the country between Palo Verde and Ogilby.

There’s supposed to be a road that runs through there. The maps vary. Some of them show the road as being impassable; some of them show it as an abandoned road; some of them show it as a road that traffic can get through on.

Over to the west is another road which runs between Niland and Ripley. In between is a big triangle of waste desert, with the Chocolate Mountains rearing their deeply washed sides in a shimmering atmosphere of intense heat.

Up toward the apex of the triangle, where the two so-called roads run together, is the city of Blythe, a few miles west of the Colorado River, and on the main highway which runs from Mecca to Phoenix.

Sally Ehlers met us at Blythe. She looked George Ringley over.

“I can see a resemblance to your father,” she said. “I knew him back ages ago when I was a little girl.”

George Ringley surveyed her with eyes that were keenly appreciative.

“Not so awfully long ago,” he said.

She nodded.

“So long ago I hate to think of it,” she said. “So you’ve come out to represent your father in re-locating the Chuckwalla claims, have you?”

George Ringley looked over at her and grinned.

“I guess that’s what I came out here for,” he said. “Bob Zane wouldn’t tell me. He only told me that he was acting under secret instructions from my father, and that what we were going to do was to be shrouded in the utmost secrecy.”

Sally Ehlers met my eyes.

“It’s a good thing you figured on keeping it secret, Uncle Bob,” she told me. “Big Bill Ordway knows what’s happening.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“He happened to remember about that big low-grade proposition that you and Pete Ringley brought in seven years ago. You remember, at the time you didn’t know just how much it was going to run. Then, when you found out that it would cost at least a dollar and a half a ton more to work than you could get out of it, you told it around as a joke — the big bonanza that fizzled out.”

“And Ordway remembered it?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “Ordway figures that you’ll be starting out to re-locate it. He hasn’t said anything, but I know what’s on his mind. He’s hanging around town, but he’s got an outfit all ready to start. He’s got an automobile all packed and provisioned, and then he’s got a string of burros so he can start on a minute’s notice.”

“But why do we have to keep it a secret from Father — what we’re doing, I mean?” George asked.

Sally Ehlers looked at me.

“You do whatever Bob Zane tells you,” she said, “and you’ll come out all right.”

“Has Bill Ordway got any men with him?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said, “but I don’t know who they are. But there are five saddle burros in the string, and three pack burros. All of them are fast walkers. He’s been holding them here in town ever since you left for the East.”

“Has he been trying to pump you at all, Sally?” I asked.

She nodded her head. “He’s been asking lots of questions. They seemed like aimless questions,” she said, “but I knew he was fishing around for something.”

“You think he remembers the whole thing then?”

“I’m sure he does.”

I looked about me at the blue vault of the cloudless sky, at the shimmering heat waves which radiated from the horizon. The Palo Verde Valley was a veritable oasis, with irrigation water transferring the desert soil into green fields of alfalfa, with huge shade trees breaking the direct rays of the fierce sun and casting welcome pools of deep shadow. But out beyond stretched the desert, a vast shimmering waste of sand, broken here and there by clumps of greasewood or sage. Out toward the Chocolate Mountains there was no travel. The desert waited with white-hot arms, and swallowed those who entered into a silence that was like that of the grave.

Occasionally, figures returned from the desert. Sometimes they did not return. When they did not return, the shifting sands of the cruel desert covered that which had happened. Occasionally, some prospector would blunder upon a pile of bleached bones. Sometimes trail-wise eyes would decipher that which had happened; sometimes there would be a scribbled note left by the hapless victim of the desert. More often there was nothing.

George Ringley’s tone was casually optimistic.

“Oh, well,” he said, “we’ve got nothing to worry about. We can go out there and make the location and get back inside of a day or two, can’t we, Zane?”

I shook my head.

Sally Ehlers smiled. Her eyes were black as chunks of wet obsidian and as expressionless as those of an Indian, but now there was a tolerant smile in them which even George Ringley could decipher.

“Oh, I know I’m green to the country,” he said, “but, after all, the desert isn’t like it used to be. I’ve read books about it. You can drive an automobile almost anywhere now.”

“Not where we’re going,” I told him.

“No?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “We’re going to go by the most direct method. We’re going to go right to the claims we’re going to locate. Then I’m going to come on back and record the location notices. You and Sally are going to stay on the ground and hold the claim against all comers.”

“You want me to go?” asked Sally.

I nodded.

“Particularly,” I told her.

Her eyes had a frowningly thoughtful expression.

“Just why?” she asked.

“Because,” I said, “you’re a notary public.”

She remained thoughtfully observant.

“Just the three of us?” she asked.

“Just the three of us,” I told her.

“When do we start?”

“Sometime within a day or two,” I told her. “I want George to get toughened up so he can stand the desert.”

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said. “I play a pretty good game of golf now and can toddle around for thirty-six holes when I have to. I can tire the caddies out, if it comes to that.”

“The desert,” I told him, “isn’t like a golf course.”

He looked out at it and made a grimace.

“I’ll say it isn’t,” he said. “What does a man do for a bath out there?”

“You’ve got a perpetual shower bath,” I told him.

He looked at me uncomprehendingly.

“The perspiration,” I said, “streams out of your skin and is evaporated by the sun.”

He rubbed his hand over his moist forehead.

“It comes out faster with me,” he said.

“After you’ve been here awhile,” I told him, “you dry out and get so you don’t sweat all the time. You get accustomed to the desert.”

“Like a mummy?” he asked.

“Like a mummy,” I told him.

“I don’t think,” he said, “I’m going to like the desert.”

“You never can tell,” I told him, “until you get out in it. Then you either love it or you hate it. And if you hate it, your hatred is bred of fear, nine times out of ten.”

His eyes met mine with a calm, steady glitter.

“I’m not going to be afraid of it,” he said.

“You’re going to like it, then,” I told him.

“Well,” he said, “no matter whether I like it or whether I don’t, you don’t need to wait around to get me toughened up. If we want to start, let’s go.”

“You stick around here and talk to Sally Ehlers,” I told him, “and I’ll browse around a bit and see what I can find out.”

I left them, with George Ringley bending over her with just a slight stamp of patronizing tolerance in his manner. Sally’s eyes were enigmatical, but she was tense as a poised cat getting ready to pounce.

My prowling around consisted of rounding up the string of burros I had left in a river-bottom pasture and getting a bunch of provisions and canteens together. I did it unostentatiously. The stuff was packed in an automobile, taken down to the river bottom and dumped out. I put on the packs down there.

About dusk I hunted up Sally Ehlers.

“Where’s the golfer?” I asked.

“Over at the hotel,” she said.

I found him in his room. He had changed to the clothes I’d picked up for him to wear — a pair of overalls, boots, a light-blue shirt and a straw hat.

“Looks like the devil!” he said.

“Never mind what it looks like,” I told him. “We’re leaving about ten o’clock to-night. You’d better get some sleep. I’m going to give you a caddy you won’t tire out on this trip.”

He grinned at me.

“Has the caddy got long ears?” he asked.

I liked his grin. Now that some of the booze was sweating out of his system, he reminded me more and more of his dad when I’d first known him.

“The caddy,” I told him, “has long ears.”

IV Into the Desert

The desert has as many moods as a woman and the desert at night is as different from the desert at day as is winter from summer.

The night was moonlit. Our burros filed out in a long shuffling file, the sound of their feet in the sand and the creak of the saddle leather being the only noises which marred the tranquillity of the calm desert night.

The moon was almost full. It rode in the heavens like a vast ball of silver, and the white sand of the desert caught the moonlight and flung it back until the whole surface of the desert seemed to be bathed in some mystic shimmering pool of white light through which we plunged in shuffling Indian file, casting grotesque shadows which were like splotches of ink on the glistening sand.

George Ringley had enough of his father in him so that the desert thrilled him with its vast mystery. But he had been bred in the ways of the city, and the tranquil silence, which seemed to blot out noise as a blotting paper absorbs ink, made him nervous. He started to whistle in a low key.

“Silence!” I called to him.

We shuffled on in absolute silence.

The calm tranquillity of interstellar space stretched unbroken down from the high places and rested like a mantle upon the surface of the desert.

We shuffled along until the moon set, which was about an hour or an hour and a half before daylight.

As the moon dropped down behind the western horizon, I called a halt. We huddled together, a little compact group of figures.

“Can we make a fire?” George Ringley asked, and shivered slightly with nervousness, fatigue and the chill which comes before morning.

“No,” I told him; “it isn’t safe. We’d make too easy a target against the light of a campfire. We’ll wait until to-morrow and see if we’re followed. You’ll be warm enough in a couple of hours.”

The burros took the opportunity to rest, standing dejectedly, their ears flopping forward, pulled by their own weight. The three of us sat in a little huddle. The moon dropped down below the rim of the western desert and swift darkness marched silently across the cold surface of the desert. The stars blazed with steady brilliance.

“It’s lonesome,” said George Ringley suddenly.

I said nothing. Sally Ehlers laughed lightly.

“You’ll get used to it after a while,” she said. “But there’s always the mystery.”

The stars seemed gradually to draw farther back into the heavens, until they became mere needle points of light. One of those swift desert breezes sprung up which come from nowhere and blow the sand in scurrying clouds, sending it hissing against the cacti, rattling through the greasewood, and at times, when the wind becomes stronger, making that most peculiar and subtle sound of all — the whispering, slithering noises of sand scurrying over sand.

George Ringley spoke, and now the spell of the desert had impressed itself upon him sufficiently so that his voice was a whisper.

“It seems as though the sand is talking,” he said.

“Yes,” I told him. “Those are the sand whispers. You hear them in the desert when you’re camped out on the sand. The desert seems to talk.”

We sat and listened to it in silence. The whole desert seemed to be stirring. The little sand wraiths swirled and streamed about us in the darkness, each giving its little mysterious hissing whisper, until it seemed that the desert had a thousand tongues whispering warnings to us.

Then the east turned to gold. The gold showed a splash of vivid crimson where a few little clouds nestled over the eastern mountains. The stars were absorbed in a steely blue as the light grew stronger, and abruptly the sun plunged over the rim of the mountains and sent long, level rays flooding the desert.

George Ringley’s laugh was nervous.

“Say,” he said, “there was something spooky about those sand whispers, wasn’t there? It almost got my goat for a minute.”

The wind had died away as the rays of sunlight searched out the glistening sand of the desert. The mystery of the desert dawn, the peculiar thrill of the desert whispers, were but memories. The glaring light of common day transformed the desert into a vast waste of sand, cacti, greasewood and sage.

“The desert is a law unto itself,” said Sally Ehlers, glancing at me to see if I intended to make any statement.

I swung into my saddle without a word.

“Were going on?” asked George Ringley, and I thought there was a trace of weariness in his voice.

“Going on,” I said, “during the cool of the morning.”

“How about coffee?” he asked.

“After it gets too hot to travel,” I told him.

We shuffled along for an hour. The sun started burning the desert with a fiery heat. The horizons began to dance and shimmer. Mirages chased their way about the distances, giving the effect of shimmering pools of water in which were reflected the heat-tortured outlines of the mountains.

About eight o’clock I called a halt. It was hot by that time, a dry heat which seemed to drain the very life from one’s body. Little gnats buzzed about in front of the eyes or stung through the skin.

George Ringley’s eyes were a trifle bloodshot. His lips were commencing to crack. His laugh was nervous.

“I’m not so certain that I can keep this up day after day,” he said, and looked quickly at Sally Ehlers.

“You should,” I told him, “be able to do as much as a girl, shouldn’t you?”

I tried to make the question without scorn, merely as a matter of casual inquiry.

He flushed and stiffened.

“I was only kidding,” he said. “I’ll do as much as any of you.”

We unpacked the burros. I built a little fire, made coffee, and we had some eggs and bacon. Then we had a can of that desert luxury, pure watery tomato juice drained from a can of tomatoes. After that, we ate the tomatoes on bread. I kept looking at the back trail. Sally Ehlers watched me anxiously. George Ringley ate in silence, his eyes on his food. Occasionally he made irritable swipes with his hand at the little gnats which got in front of his eyes and buzzed about steadily or crawled in his ears.

“It doesn’t do any good to fight them,” Sally Ehlers said. “It just makes you nervous.”

“How do you stand them?” asked George Ringley, and this time there was no discounting the irritation in his voice.

“You simply learn to be patient,” she said. “It’s one of the lessons that the desert teaches you.”

“Oh, damn the desert!” he exclaimed irritably.

I shifted my eyes to his. His locked with mine for a moment, then dropped.

“We can get some sleep here in the shade,” I told them. “You two sleep and I’ll keep watch.”

“What are we keeping watch for?” George Ringley asked.

“To see if any one is riding on our trail.”

The two of them lay down in the shade of a patch of greasewood. The shade was scanty. The gnats were troublesome. Sally Ehlers put a handkerchief over her face and slept. George Ringley twisted and turned, moaned in fitful sleep. Occasionally he would give a convulsive start and sit up to stare groggily at me from bloodshot eyes.

About noon I saw a little cloud of dust on our back trail. Half an hour later I could make out moving dots, and then the dust settled and ceased. The moving dots became invisible as they blended with the shade of tall greasewood bushes.

I waited until I was certain they were not coming on, and then crawled into a clump of brush. Sally Ehlers heard me and sat up.

“See anything?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Eight burros. They’ve stopped a couple of miles back there. They spotted us, probably through binoculars. They’ll wait until we move on. There’s nothing more to be done.”

“I’ll watch,” she said.

“You don’t need to,” I told her. “They’re simply going to keep us in sight.”

I put a bandanna over my face, drove a little stick into the ground to hold the cloth away from my nostrils and dropped off at once into dreamless sleep.

The sun was low in the west when I awoke. Sally Ehlers had a little fire going and was teaching George Ringley some of the first rudiments of desert cooking. Ringley’s lips had commenced to crack; his face was an angry red; the eyes were bloodshot. His manner was the grim, dogged determination of a runner who finds himself commencing to weary in a race, but who is determined to hang on.

After our simple meal of plain desert fare, I sent George out to pick up some of the burros that were browsing about. Sally Ehlers moved over toward me and said in a low voice, “Just what are you planning to do, Bob?”

“What do you mean, Sally?” I asked.

“You’re not going to go out and locate that mine with Bill Ordway’s gang on your trail, are you? You know what would happen. We’d never get back to record the claim, in the first place, and in the second place, you could never hold possession against Ordway’s gang.”

“Perhaps I could,” I said.

“And perhaps you couldn’t,” she told me. “I never did understand why you came out here with just the three of us. Why didn’t you get two or three men that you could depend on?”

“Because,” I said, “I’m taking George Ringley to finishing school.”

“Finishing school?” she asked.

“Did you ever see wood that had been treated by a sand blast?” I asked her.

“What’s that got to do with it?” she wanted to know.

“A lot,” I said. “All of the roughness is stripped away. All of the glitter and veneer is gone. That which is left is just the true substantial wood, honest and rugged.”

“Well?” she asked.

“That,” I told her, “is what’s going to happen to George. He’s had too much civilization, too much moisture — not enough hardships. He needs a dose of the desert, needs to have the sand drift against his character, cut away all of this loose, flabby flesh and strip him down to his naked soul.”

“You certainly don’t intend to locate this mine with Big Bill Ordway and his gang on your trail, do you?” she asked.

I grinned at her, went to my saddle bag, took out a canvas sack and pulled out some ore.

She looked at it and gasped.

“Free milling ore!” she said. “Where did it come from? Have you struck a bonanza, Bob?”

“No,” I told her, “that high-grade ore came from a mine in Nevada. They struck a pocket in there that was so rich it had more gold than rock.”

She looked at the specimens with appreciative eyes.

“Aren’t those pretty?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I told her. “I’m going to go to a place about two or three miles from the Chuckwalla claims. I’m going to stake it out. It’ll look like a regular claim. I’ll pretend that I don’t know Bill Ordway’s on my trail. Then I’ll leave you and the kid in possession of the claim, and I’ll start back to record the location notice. But I’ll start in the moonlight, so that I’ll run right into Big Bill Ordway’s gang. You know what’ll happen. They’ll hold me up, take the notice from me, tear it up, probably take my burro, leave me afoot and tell me to keep moving.”

“They’ll take your guns away from you,” she said.

“Sure,” I told her, “but I’ll cache some guns along the road. I’ve got some extra ones in the packs. Then Ordway will move on down and dispossess you two. It’ll be up to you to see that the kid doesn’t actually do any shooting. You can explain to him at the last that you’re overpowered by superior numbers and that you’ve got to get out.”

“Then what’ll happen?” she said.

“Then,” I said, “Bill Ordway will put some of his gang in to keep possession of the claim, and he’ll take the rest of them and make a run for the county seat, to record his location. After he’s done that we’ll move on to the Chuckwalla claims and locate them at our leisure. In fact, I’ll make our fake location a few miles south of the Chuckwalla claims, so that when we start back they’ll be right in our road. After Ordway turns me loose in the desert I’ll mosey on up to the Chuckwalla claims and locate them. I’ll pick up the guns on the way up there, so that I’ll be armed and ready to stand my ground in case anything should go wrong. But it won’t.”

She nodded slowly.

“You think that’s going to make a man out of George?” she asked.

“It’s all going to help,” I told her. “Were all going to get out in the desert and get right down to brass tacks. It’s a cinch Ordway will take some of our provisions and water. He’ll leave us stripped down just as close as he dares to.”

“You don’t think he’ll shoot?” she asked.

“Not if he gets possession of the claims without shooting,” I told her. “Ordway is smooth. He knows that if it comes to a lawsuit, his men can testify to one thing and we can testify to another; that if he’s got possession, that’s all that counts. If there’s any shooting, of course, Ordway will shoot back. That’s where you’ve got to come in. You’ve got to see that there isn’t any shooting.”

She nodded, and about that time George Ringley came back leading a sleepy-eyed burro, with a couple more following along behind.

We put the stuff on the burros and started out.

Ringley didn’t look quite so well. His face was slightly swollen from the sunburn. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. His lips were badly cracked. There wasn’t any grin on his face any more, but there was a dogged determination in his eyes.

We shuffled along through the late afternoon, through the twilight, and then through the calm moonlit night. The burros plodded patiently and steadily. There wasn’t any trace of Big Bill Ordway’s gang, but I knew that they were on my trail. I knew that they respected my knowledge of the desert and would do everything they could to keep us from finding out that we were being followed. The farther we got into the desert the more they’d drop behind, figuring that they could always follow our tracks.

Our burros walked along at a good pace, steady and monotonous, but a pace that put the miles behind. I saw George Ringley sway several times in the saddle, and knew that he was dropping off to sleep. I could also tell from the way he sat his saddle that he was getting pretty sore. But he hadn’t complained.

Around midnight we dropped down into a little cañon, and I built a fire and brewed a cup of strong tea apiece, which was better than drinking the lukewarm water from the canteens, which had sloshed around until it commenced to taste strongly of the metal.

Ringley dropped to sleep by the campfire, and I could see that Sally Ehlers was getting pretty near the point of exhaustion.

“Another five miles,” I told them, “and we’ll camp and get a little sleep while it’s cool.”

The burros pushed on for that last five miles. I got the packs off, hobbled a couple of the burros, let the others run loose and pillowed my head on a saddle.

“You’re not keeping a lookout?” asked Sally Ehlers.

I shook my head.

“No,” I said, “we don’t need to. Just drop off to sleep and get a good sleep. We may have a hard day to-morrow.”

George Ringley was too tired to argue; too tired even to get into his blankets or undress. He simply flopped on the sand, pillowed his head on his saddle and dropped off to sleep. Sally Ehlers covered him with a blanket, because the desert would get cold just before dawn. I kicked off my boots, rolled myself in a blanket and was almost instantly asleep.

That night the desert talked again, but George Ringley didn’t hear it. The little sand swirls scurried around over the country, rustling against the sage and greasewood, whispering strange secrets of the desert. But George Ringley slept on. And yet I knew that he was hearing the noises of the desert, despite the fact that he was sleeping. One may shut his ears to the sound of the desert, but the desert stamps itself upon one’s soul just the same. George Ringley might not have consciously heard the noises of the drifting sand, but those sand whispers were doing things to his soul, nevertheless.

A professor of psychology camped with me for a while. He was out on the desert getting rid of a spot on his left lung. He told me that the subconscious mind was always receptive; that man’s environment stamped itself indelibly upon his character, because of the innumerable little things that were soaked up by the subconscious mind, without the consciousness being aware of it.

I didn’t get it in just the terms that he expressed it, but I got the idea all right, and I knew that it was the truth. I’d seen men in the desert before. The drifting sand blasts through the veneer of their character, just the same as the sand blast ripped the surface off of the wood in that house of Pete Ringley. Sometimes, when the sand got done, there was honest, sound wood down underneath, and sometimes it was just a rotten heart that had been covered with a veneer of highly polished wood. I’ve seen both kinds in the desert, but I’ve never seen a man in the desert who didn’t get stripped of his veneer and get right down to the stuff that was underneath.

George Ringley slept until about an hour after sunup. Then the gnats and flies got to bothering him and the heat of the desert started doing its stuff.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

I had breakfast almost ready, gave him some coffee and flapjacks. Sally Ehlers looked as fresh as she had the day we started.

“What’s the program?” asked Ringley.

“Feel that you can ride a little today?” I asked.

When I mentioned riding, I noticed his face twist in an involuntary grimace, but he nodded his head.

“Sure I can ride,” he said.

“We’ll work on for an hour or two,” I said. “When it commences to get hot we’ll stop again. We’re going to try short trips from now on. The burros will stand up better, and it will be a lot easier on you.”

“Never mind me,” he said.

Sally Ehlers flashed me a glance.

I didn’t say anything.

We finished breakfast, got the burros up and got another nine miles behind us. Then we slept until late afternoon, had another meal, got the burros up, and about seven thirty came down a long slope and looked over toward the Chocolate Mountains.

Sally Ehlers rode up beside me.

“Aren’t those the Chuckwalla claims?” she asked, nodding her head to the left.

“Those are the ones,” I told her. “You ride on with George for a piece. I’ll catch up with you later.”

She nodded and said something to George. They went on.

It was a full moon, and the sun had set just a few minutes ago in the west. The big moon was climbing over the eastern horizon, not red like some huge pumpkin, as it is in the impure air of the cities, but showing a pure delicate silver from the minute it climbed into view.

I made certain that Bill Ordway wasn’t crowding us too closely, and then I took a shovel from the pack and buried a rifle, a pair of six-shooters and plenty of shells. I smoothed the ground over and made certain that a tracker wouldn’t spot the place, particularly in the moonlight. Then I threw the pack rope back into place, got on my burro and urged him to speed. I caught up with the others within about a mile and a half. After we’d gone another half mile I said, “This is the place, Sally, over here to the right.”

“You mean this is our camp?” asked George Ringley.

“This is close enough to it,” I said.

He heaved a big sigh of relief, got from the saddle, tried to walk and fell flat. His legs were too stiff to function. After a minute or two he got up and grinned.

“I hope we stay here for a day or two,” he said.

I took some provisions and a little extra water, backtracked for a ways, and buried the stuff. Then I swung back so I could watch our back trail. Not that I expected to gain anything by it, but I knew that Bill Ordway would be suspicious if I made things too easy for him.

Bill was playing his hand pretty close to his chest. I knew that he was following along the trail. I knew that he knew we’d camped. The moonlight was almost as bright as day, but I did not see any trace of him or his men.

The next morning I took some location notices and started locating claims. George Ringley watched me with big eyes. Sally Ehlers seemed nervous and tense.

“Now,” I told them, “I’m going to leave you here with these claims. You can prowl around and do a little prospecting. It would probably be a good thing if you did. I’m going to go on back and record the claims. I’ll make a quick trip, then I’ll pick up some more provisions and come back to you just as soon as I can. I shouldn’t be gone over four or five days. I’ll take a fast-traveling burro and one of the packs, and I’ll shuffle right along.”

George Ringley looked around at the hot surface of the desert.

“Shucks!” he said. “There isn’t a human being within a million miles of us. We could leave the government mint exposed right here, and there wouldn’t be any trouble.”

Sally Ehlers didn’t say anything.

“Well,” I told him, “it will give you a good rest anyway.”

I put some provisions on the pack, not too many. I took a rifle and strapped a six-shooter around my waist.

I nodded to Sally Ehlers and shook hands with George Ringley.

I had the samples of high-grade ore in my saddle bags, and took care to see that the flap of one saddle bag was open so that a corner of the canvas sack was visible.

V The Hold-Up

My burros shuffled off at a rapid pace. Behind me, the serrated line of the Chocolate Mountains was sharply outlined against the deep blue-black of the desert sky. The air was so clear that it was possible to see every detail for long distances until the heat waves started distorting the scenery.

From time to time I turned in my saddle and looked back at the claim we had staked out. I could see two figures standing there watching me. From time to time they would wave. At length, the heat waves started making them do all sorts of weird dances, and then I dropped down into a depression and rode along a sandy wash, the claim shut from my sight.

I was following the trail we had made in going to the place we had located. Had I been trying to avoid Bill Ordway, I naturally would never have taken the same trail, but would either have kept on going until I hit Niland or Ogilby, and then gone by railroad to the county seat, or I would have swung back in a big circle. As it was, however, I played right into their hands, but kept a sharp watch to see if they were hidden along the trail. At that, they made a good job of it. I had no warning of the ambush until the hot rays of the sun glinted on the blue-steel barrel of a rifle within less than twenty yards.

“Stick ’em up!” said a man’s voice.

I hesitated just a moment, not long enough to actually collect lead, but long enough not to make my obedience seem suspicious.

A voice from behind me shouted: “Get them up quick, Bob, or you’ll get perforated!”

I turned.

Another man was hidden behind a rocky outcropping some fifteen yards to the rear. They had me between a cross-fire. I elevated my hands. A third man came out from the sandy wash. He was Bill Ordway, a big, ungainly figure, with a paunchy stomach, cheeks that were flabby and a mouth and eyes that were hard as steel.

“Get off the burro, Bob,” he said, “and unbuckle your six-gun as you get off. Don’t make any sudden motions. You’re between two fires.”

I slid to the ground and unbuckled my six-gun.

“March over against that rock,” Ordway said, gesturing with the barrel of a six-shooter.

I backed over against the rock.

“Search his burro, boys,” said Bill Ordway. “You’ll find a description of the claim in the saddle bags probably.”

“Perhaps he’s got it on him,” one of the men said, walking up with a rifle in the crook of his elbow.

“We’ll make sure of that, too,” Ordway said. “Don’t worry.”

One of the men went through the saddle bags. I heard him exclaim when he found the gold.

The three men clustered together for a moment, their eyes bulging as they saw the gold. Then they uncovered the notice I had ready for recording. They were excited, but not so excited that they overlooked their hand. They kept me covered. After a while, Bill Ordway came over to me.

“Looks pretty good, Bob,” he said. “Too bad you didn’t locate it first.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“That’s our claim,” he said. “Didn’t you see our location notice?”

I twisted my lips into a sneer.

“A fat chance that it’s your claim,” I said.

“Sure it is,” he said. “We located it yesterday. We were starting back to record it when we saw you go on past. Then we watched you go in and jump our claim. We were coming down to do something about it when you rode right into our arms. We had our location notices there, all duly in order.”

“Not when I located it,” I said.

“Oh yes we did,” he said. “You can’t pull that stuff on us, Bob Zane, no matter how smart a guy you think you are, nor how much experience you’ve had in the desert.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh, what the hell’s the use?” I said. “You’re going to steal the claim — go ahead and do it and cut out all the conversation!”

Big Bill Ordway said nothing. His face was cold and determined. His hands patted my pockets. Searched for a shoulder holster under my armpit.

“Okay, boys,” he said, “he’s clean.”

He made further search, looking for any additional location notices. When he had satisfied himself that I had none he nodded toward the desert.

“All right, Bob,” he said. “You’ve got the reputation of being a good man in the desert. Take a canteen of water and a couple of cans of beans and start.”

“How about my burro?” I asked.

“You never had any burro,” he told me.

“I can’t get very far on water and a couple of cans of beans,” I said.

“You can get as far as you’re going,” he told me, “and don’t think we don’t know it. You’ll probably beat us into Blythe, but it won’t do you any good. There are too many witnesses against you. Do you understand?”

“Understand what?” I asked.

“Understand that you tried to jump our claim,” he said. “You couldn’t make it stick. We were on the ground and in possession. You did the best you could, but we were there first. Do you get that straight?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“All right,” he said, “get started.”

I made a gesture of resignation, started walking along through the hot, blinding sand of the desert, my head forward dejectedly, the two cans of beans they bad given me thrust in a bit of sacking and thrown over my shoulder, the water canteen pounding on my hip as I walked. The others got on burros and rode away. I watched them until they were out of sight, then I started shuffling along once more. After a while I took care to leave my tracks where it wouldn’t be too easy to follow them, picking out the rocky stretches and working along those, until I found an outcropping, up which I climbed until I struck a ridge. I worked along the ridge and headed over toward the Chuckwalla claim.

I was just digging up the rifle and revolvers that I’d cached, when I heard the sound of distant shooting.

The hot, dry air of the desert absorbed the sound, until the roar of the guns sounded like the dull pop of distant firecrackers.

I sat and listened to the firing for some little time. I couldn’t figure it out. Sally Ehlers had specifically understood that she was to keep George Ringley from doing any shooting. I figured that Big Bill Ordway wouldn’t shoot unless he had to. He was perfectly willing to commit murder, but he didn’t want to do it.

I put up monuments and made a location on the Chuckwalla claims, then I got the stuff ready to take into the recorder’s office, and sat and waited.

The firing was still going on.

I couldn’t figure that out. The shadows were commencing to stretch across the desert. It was nearly time for me to take some definite action, and Big Bill Ordway and his gang were still popping rifles over the rocky ridge which prevented me from seeing what was going on.

The more I thought of it, the less I liked it. Finally I went around and took down all of my location notices and leveled the location monuments. Then I shouldered my rifle, saw that the two six-guns were working freely in their holsters and started trudging back toward the place where I’d left Sally Ehlers and George Ringley.

I didn’t go by the same route that I had come, but worked around the ridge toward the west, so that I would be coming up on the attackers with the sun at my back.

The firing continued. The sun was just touching the rim of the western hills when I got to a point where I could see what was going on.

Sally Ehlers and George Ringley had built themselves a rock barricade, a first class little fortress. They’d built it in such a way that they commanded the surrounding country. Big Bill Ordway and his gang were strung around in a big circle. They had the place virtually surrounded. There was a big peak off to the rear, but it was pretty much out of rifle range, and they hadn’t tried as yet to get up on there and drop shells down into the fort, but I could see them crawling around in gullies and washes, looking like black beetles dragging themselves across the white sand. Occasionally they’d fire a few shells, apparently in order to keep the defenders from getting into a position where they could deliver an accurate fire.

The pair in the fort were holding their fire, sending, however, an occasional well-placed bullet. From where I was, I could see the dust rise up near one of the crawling figures.

I carried a small pocket telescope with me, one that had a small field but a great deal of power. I used it occasionally to trace formations with. Bill Ordway had evidently figured a telescope wouldn’t do very much harm. He hadn’t bothered to take it. I got it out, and in the dying light focused it on the field of battle.

What I saw didn’t give me any additional information. I could see that Sally Ehlers was taking care of the east end of the fort, George Ringley of the west end. As I looked through the telescope, I could see an occasional flick of dust where a bullet struck, or see powder fly from one of the rocks in the fort.

Looking over Big Bill Ordway’s gang, I figured he must have six or seven in all, which was more than I’d figured him for. Some of the gang must have kept out of sight when he picked me up.

I could see that Bill Ordway was getting his men placed in strategic positions. Under cover of darkness, they could work in to the fort, but there’d only be about half an hour of darkness after the sun went down, and before the moon came up. They’d have to work quickly.

On the other hand, it was certain that Ringley and Sally Ehlers weren’t getting anywhere. They were simply holding themselves in a state of siege. But, of course, Bill Ordway didn’t know how long they could hold out.

While I was watching the battle, I saw a figure wave his hand two or three times, then two other figures started over toward him. I shifted the little telescope and saw that the man who had given the signal was Big Bill Ordway. The pair came over to him, and they had a short conference. Then the two started walking back toward the north, slipping from cover to cover at first, until they were pretty much out of range of the pair in the fort, and then coming out into the open, walking rapidly.

I couldn’t figure that for a minute, and then all at once, the explanation struck me.

Ordway was afraid that I was going to get back to Blythe, pick up some men who would stand back of me, and come back into the desert. If they hadn’t jumped the claims by the time I returned, the men would find themselves out of luck. Therefore, Ordway had sent these two men to follow on my trail and ambush me at the first opportunity.

I sensed then that Sally Ehlers had decided that she was going to make enough racket with the firearms to bring me to the ground, knowing that when I heard the shooting, I would realize that she had, for some reason, violated the instructions I had given her.

I couldn’t figure just what the reason for that violation was, but I had enough confidence in her and her judgment to know that she was doing what was right.

Having brought me to the scene of the conflict, she was continuing to shoot from time to time in order to keep the others at their distance, and to let me see exactly what the situation was. Obviously, therefore, she expected me to do just what Bill Ordway expected me to do — go as rapidly as possible to some of the towns in the Palo Verde Valley, notify the authorities and bring them back with me.

But could they hold out until that time?

I doubted it.

The moon would be rising some forty-five minutes later every night. After two nights, the interval of darkness would be amply sufficient to enable Bill Ordway to get his gang together and to rush the defenders. I couldn’t possibly make it to Blythe and back in time to keep that from happening.

I decided, therefore, that before I took any definite steps, I’d find out something about what was going on, so I started looking around, using the telescope and shifting my position from time to time. Before it got dark, I had discovered several things. One of them was that the men had dumped all of their provisions by their burros, and that their burros were located in a little wash down by the foot of a butte. There was no one guarding their base of supplies.

I started working against approaching darkness, moving around toward the place where they maintained their base of supplies. The gang were fully occupied with the business in hand. I got to within about a hundred and twenty-five yards of the place without being detected. I nestled behind a rock, got my rifle pressed against my cheek. It was pretty hard to see with the leaf sights, but I put up the peep sight and got a good bead on the pile of canteens.

The canteens jumped and jiggled as the bullets crashed into them. Six shots and the water supply of Bill Ordway’s gang was pretty much ruined.

The peculiar thing was that no one paid any attention to what was happening. Rifles were banging all around in a brisk fusillade, and apparently every one of the gang took it for granted that the shots were being fired by some other member of the gang.

I reloaded the rifle, slipped back from behind my rock, worked down a slope and started circling so that I could get into a position where I could help Sally Ehlers and George Ringley if it became necessary.

Darkness settled rapidly, and I knew that Ordway would try a rush if he could do it before the moon came up.

I managed to get a good place of concealment down behind a little bunch of rocks. And I flattened out so that I was as close to the ground as possible.

VI Night Tactics

It gets dark rapidly in the desert. The stars began to appear. The western heavens showed a glow of light, but darkness was settling on the desert like a thick blanket.

I lay looking up at the bright patch of sky, and suddenly saw something move. A moment later I saw the form of a man crouched low, moving along the little ridge which communicated with the slope on which the defenders had made their fort.

Back of the first figure came another and then another.

I nestled my gun against my shoulder, didn’t try to use the sights, but shot entirely by the feel of the weapon.

I pulled the trigger. The big gun jarred into recoil, and, spitting orange flame, shot lead into the night.

That first shot came as a surprise. I flung two more at the attackers before they suddenly realized that they had been outflanked. I doubt, at the time, if they thought I had doubled back to assist the defenders, but they figured that Sally Ehlers or George Ringley had left the little fortress, under cover of darkness, and had moved out to intercept them.

There was a sudden fusillade of shots, little pinpricking bursts of flame which showed red and angry in the darkness. Bullets whizzed overhead, spatted against the rocks or zoomed off into space with long whining screams.

I heard the sound of footsteps pounding along the ground as the men charged.

I didn’t lose my head as a novice at night fighting might have done, and return the fire. Nor did I arise to meet the charge. I simply pressed myself flat against the desert and lay there.

The men had been almost a hundred and fifty yards off when I fired my shots. Charging a hundred and fifty yards through darkness isn’t a thing that’s easily done, particularly when one is not certain that one’s enemy will remain in any certain place.

Before the men had come fifty yards I heard the jarring impact of one of them falling to the earth as he stubbed his toe on a rock. Another crashed into a patch of cacti, and as the needles pierced his legs he let out a yell of pain. The others were swinging to one side, their charge stopped of sheer inertia before they had reached the place where I lay concealed. I heard them muttering cautious comments, then huddling together for a conference. It was possible for me to hear every word they said.

I recognized Bill Ordway’s voice.

“It’s the girl,” he said. “She’s got more sense than the fellow. She’s detoured out to the side to ambush us. She’s sneaked back to the fort now.”

A man’s voice said, “Don’t be too sure she’s gone back to the fort. She may be sticking around here somewhere. Whoever she is, she shoots like the devil. She got Bert in the leg and one of those bullets went through my Stetson.”

“Well, come on,” said Bill Ordway. “If she’s out of the fort there’s only one left. We can rush it before the moon comes up.”

“I’ve lost my bearings now,” one of the men said.

“You can see the outline of that peak against the sky. It’s up the slope just to the right of that.”

“Damn it!” said a man’s voice. “I wish they’d do a little shooting so we could tell just where they are. We’ve moved over here to the side and I don’t know just where the place is now. We don’t want to go floundering around there in the dark.”

The little knot of men gave a murmur of assent.

“This is no time to go blundering around if we don’t know where we’re going, and what we’re going after, Bill,” a man’s voice said. “We’d better go do something about Bert’s leg. The bullet went through the upper part of it.”

“Oh, the hell with Bert,” Ordway said. “Arc you fellows going to stand around here and talk until the moon comes up, or are you going to follow me?”

He pushed on ahead.

I waited until he was almost lost in the darkness, and then, when I could see just a vague indistinct blotch of shadow, I fired again, shooting by the feel of the weapon, and shooting low.

I heard a man yell, then once more the darkness was ripped by stabbing flashes of flame.

Two or three of the men came charging toward me. I heard Ordway shouting at them to let me go and to rush the claim. His orders, however, were not obeyed. The men didn’t relish the idea of having an enemy in the rear.

The two defenders in the fort held their fire. I figured they probably either sensed some friction in the attackers or else they realized that their strongest defense lay in keeping the location of their fortress sufficiently indefinite to prevent the attackers from making a direct charge.

I heard men crawling about me through the darkness, and sat tight. They worked on past me. One of them came so close that I could hear his labored breathing. They drew together some twenty yards on the other side of me, and I heard them whisper, but I wasn’t able to distinguish the words, but I could hear the hissing sibilance of the whispers.

I sat tight and didn’t move.

There was a glow of rosy light in the east. I heard Bill Ordway cursing his men for fools. Then the rim of the moon appeared over the eastern mountains. The first rays of the silvery moonlight gave some degree of weird visibility to the desert.

My own position was just a little dangerous. The enemy were all about me and the moon was coming up. However, I clung to my little depression in the sand with the rocks that I had flung about me, casting enough shadow so that I blended with the other shadows which were cast by the rays of the rising moon.

After a moment the men walked over to join Ordway, and as they walked they went within some ten feet of me, but they didn’t see me. Nor, on the other hand, did I open up on them. I figured that I was hopelessly outnumbered if they actually got me cornered, and that my best defense was to sit tight until they had found the punctured canteens.

The moon slid slowly and majestically into the heavens, illuminating the desert with its silvery rays. The attackers decided that there was nothing more they could do that night, and I heard Ordway instruct a couple of men to keep working up toward the fort, until they got as close as they dared, firing from time to time in order to keep the defenders from getting any sleep. Then Ordway and the balance of the crew went over toward the place where they had left their burros and supplies, in order to cook a meal.

I waited for four or five minutes and then heard a sudden hubbub from the place, and knew that the men had found what had happened to their water.

After that I heard a shrill whistle, then the sound of steps crunching the sand, and Bill Ordway’s hail.

It was answered by one of the men who had been detailed to work up on the fortress.

Bill Ordway called him over and said: “Somebody’s shot hell out of our canteens. The water’s all leaked out, there isn’t enough there to last us for more than half a day, not after the sun gets up.”

There was a moment of silence. Then one of the men said, “Well, that settles it. We’ve got to head back toward drinking water.”

Bill Ordway muttered a curse.

“Here’s where I fool you,” he said. “There’s plenty of drinking water in that fortress. I’m going to keep you fellows right here. If you want to get any water you’ve got to rush the fort.”

There was a moment of silence while the men digested that remark. Then one of the men started a low-voiced protest, but Bill Ordway turned on his heel and walked away. He crunched the sand with his feet, within less than five yards of the place where I lay concealed. After that there was an interval of silence and then the men turned and went back toward camp, muttering their protests. The fortress was left unmolested.

I saw the glow of a campfire. From where I was I could hear the rumble of voices. Voices that were raised in an argument, but evidently Bill Ordway had his way. The campfire continued to burn, and the men didn’t start back toward Blythe. If they had been faced with the necessity of making a forced march in the desert without water, they would, of course, have started while the moon was in the heavens, and while the desert was cool.

I moved on up closer to the fort, working my way to within about seventy-five or eighty yards, until the defenders saw me and a couple of bullets came pretty close to me. Naturally, they thought that I was one of the enemy, and I didn’t tell them anything to the contrary. I had a plan that I wanted to work out.

I burrowed my way down into a depression in the sand, and sat perfectly tight. After a while I heard the thud of running feet.

The charge toward the fort had commenced.

Rifles blazed. Two of the men dropped to the ground, the balance spread out and took to cover. There followed a period of isolated sniping, the men working around, trying to sneak on the fort under cover of the shadows cast by the moon.

But the moon was higher in the heavens now, and it was illuminating the desert with a species of silvery light that made objects almost as visible as under the noonday sun. The pair in the fort kept up a steady fire, and after a while the attackers were beaten off.

Once more they held a council of war. This time I wasn’t close enough to hear anything that was said, but I could hear the distant murmur of voices sounding like the indistinct roar of a waterfall, and once or twice I heard Big Bill Ordway’s voice as it boomed forth above the whining arguments of the men.

Two of the men had been wounded. I gathered that their wounds were serious. There was hardly enough water in the whole outfit to last them for a forced march to Blythe. In the end, apparently two of the men were dispatched for water and help. By this time, Ordway’s gang had been so seriously weakened that an attack was out of the question, but Ordway detailed one of the two remaining men to keep up a desultory fire on the fortress in order to keep the defenders from getting any sleep.

I sensed the strategy when the two men left, and the man who was chosen to keep firing on the fort took up a position within some fifty yards of where I lay concealed. I was, in fact, almost between the two fires.

I listened to the roar of the guns and the whining bullets as they passed overhead, and some ten or fifteen yards to my right. Then gradually I dropped off to sleep, knowing that we held all the trump cards in the game; but I didn’t want to play those cards. I wanted George Ringley to play them.

I dozed off and on during the night. Big Bill Ordway relieved the man who was doing the sniping shortly after midnight.

VII The Hero

Along toward morning the night wind came up, and the desert commenced to whisper. I lay and dozed, keeping an eye on the place where Big Bill Ordway had fired his last shot, keeping my rifle ready and sleeping with my senses alert.

It was around four thirty in the morning when I heard the noise of crunching sand. A noise that wasn’t made by the night wind.

I cocked my rifle and nestled it up against my shoulder. The noise seemed to be coming from the direction of the fortress.

I sat silent and alert, my rifle ready.

A man came crawling along the desert, working his way by inches, stopping from time to time perfectly motionless and peering about him. He was dragging a rifle along the ground.

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was George Ringley.

I let him pass.

The wind, which had been sending the sand in little drifting eddies, died away, and the desert became calm and still. The creeping man had passed beyond the scope of my vision. Once or twice I thought I could see him, but I wasn’t certain. There were too many shadows in the desert as the moon slid down toward the west, and it was difficult to pick out which blotch of darkness was cast by the figure of the crawling man.

Suddenly I heard a roar of rage and then the thud of a blow. Two men rose up, apparently out of the face of the desert, and started a terrific hand-to-hand struggle. They were perhaps sixty-five yards away.

I jumped up and ran toward them, my rifle at the ready.

I could see another man running from the place where the outlaws had made their camp. A man who ran with heavy, awkward strides, a gun in his hand.

I circled the combatants and headed toward this man. He was intent upon the struggling figures, apparently, trying to distinguish which was which. As I got within a few feet of him he raised his gun.

I flung my weapon to my shoulder.

“Hold everything,” I said in a low voice.

The man whirled toward me.

“Drop that gun,” I said, “or you’re a dead man.”

He fired, and at the same time I squeezed the trigger of my rifle. His bullet whizzed past my cheek, my bullet gave that unmistakable thunk which is made by a bullet when it impacts living tissue.

I saw the man jerk around as though he had been pulled by some invisible string. He staggered for two or three steps and then pitched forward on his face.

I looked back.

The two men were struggling. Apparently, they had been entirely unaware of the shooting.

Abruptly one of the men staggered backward.

I saw the smaller man swing a clubbed rifle, heard the smashing impact, and then the big man went down. I dropped to the desert.

George Ringley ran past me, going toward the place where the men had established headquarters. He was gone for perhaps three quarters of an hour. It was commencing to get light in the east when he came back.

I chuckled when I saw what he had done. He had loaded up all of the provisions on the burros, and was bringing them back with him. He picketed them near the fortress.

The stars began to recede to mere needle points of light, and once more a mysterious wind started the desert talking.

I relaxed. There was no necessity for me to enter into the picture — not just then.

I kept close to the ground, working with the caution of a man stalking a deer, taking advantage of every bit of shadow I could find, and gradually moved off to the east. By the time the rising sun cast its first rays over the peaks to the east, I was more than a mile from the fort.

After that there was nothing to it.

The men who had been sent by Bill Ordway to follow my trail had apparently followed it back to the place where I had fired my shots into the canteens.

By that time they knew what had happened. They came up to the camp where they had left their stuff. In the light of the early morning they could see their burros tied up back of the little fortress. Bill Ordway was staggering about, apparently still punch-groggy. Two of the men lay motionless on the desert, black blotches which were already commencing to attract the circling buzzards.

The men held a brief conference, then turned and started trudging through the sand, walking with the quick, anxious steps of men who are running a race with desert death.

After a moment Bill Ordway started running after them.

I waited until the figures had vanished into the heat waves of a distorted horizon, which, even so early in the morning, was commencing to dance a weird devil’s dance.

I started approaching the fort from the east. When I knew that they had seen me, I put my hat on my gun barrel and waved it. After they had recognized me, I walked on to the fort.

Sally Ehlers had a bloodstained handkerchief wrapped around her left arm. Her eyes were starry. George Ringley was grinning. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. There were powder stains on his face. His hair was tousled, there was dirt and grime all over him. His knuckles were bloody and there was a livid bruise on one cheek, but his grin had an expression of triumph.

“Where were you?” asked Sally Ehlers. “We kept shooting so that you’d know something had gone wrong.”

“I had quite a time getting here,” I said. “What happened?”

Sally Ehlers, her eyes gleaming with excitement, reached down into the loose sand at the base of the little fortress, scraped away the sand, and pulled out a rock which gave a yellow glistening gleam in the intense sunlight.

“Look!” she said, and held it out to me.

Her hand was trembling so that she could hardly hold the rock.

“You see what happened,” she said. “We started to locate this claim knowing that it was just a fake, and that you were using it as a blind to lure the claim jumpers—”

“I didn’t know that at the time,” said George Ringley.

“Of course you didn’t,” she told him, smiling. “That was a secret that Bob Zane and I had between us. But, of course, as soon as we found this rich gold, I had to tell him. Then, you see, we simply had to hold the claim.”

I nodded slowly. “I see,” I said.

I took the chunk of rock from her trembling hand. “More of it?” I asked.

“Lots of it,” she said in a voice that quavered with excitement. “There’s a ledge of it up there, and it is almost pure gold. It glitters in the sun.”

I turned the rock over and over in my hands.

“What’s the matter, Uncle Bob?” she asked. “You don’t seem very excited about it.”

I didn’t know whether I should break the news to her or not, but while I was hesitating my face told the story.

“Good heavens!” she said. “Don’t tell me it’s—”

I nodded.

“Yes, Sally,” I told her, “it’s what they call ‘fool’s gold.’ It’s a crystal formation that frequently occurs in gold-bearing rock. There may be some mineral content in here, but it’s a cinch it isn’t any bonanza of pure gold.”

She gave a little gasp of disappointment.

“Oh,” she said, and sat down on one of the rocks as though her knees had become too weak to support her.

George Ringley wanted to fight about it.

“Look here,” he said, “don’t be too sure about that. Sally Ehlers said it was gold. We’ve put up a big battle for that gold, and personally I’m going to require something more than your say-so before I figure it’s all a false alarm.”

Sally put a swift hand on his arm.

“No, George,” she said; “if Uncle Bob says it’s fool’s gold, that’s what it is.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. There was a funny expression in them.

“Then,” she said, “we violated your instructions all for nothing. There’s been a fight. Men have been killed. We risked your life and I risked George’s life, all for a lot of fool’s gold.”

I shook my head, smiling down at her.

“No,” I said, “you’re only looking at the debit side of the ledger. There’s a credit side.”

“What?” she asked in a tone that was too innocent.

I nodded my head toward George Ringley.

“Do you realize the vein of gold that you’ve uncovered?” I asked her. “You’ve uncovered a fighting character that is going to go far in the world. This boy managed, with your assistance, to beat off Big Bill Ordway’s whole gang. They were experienced desert fighters. They’ve been notorious claim jumpers for the past ten years, and you and George broke up the entire gang. You’ll be given the thanks of every miner between here and Mojave. Moreover, you’ve accomplished something that a great deal of money had never been able to accomplish.”

She looked from me to George Ringley.

“Sand blast?” she asked, and her smile was enigmatical.

I nodded.

“Exactly,” I said.

“How about the Chuckwalla claims?”

“There’s nothing to keep us from locating them,” I said. “Ordway’s gang is all busted up.”

She nodded slowly. “Just as you say, Uncle Bob,” she told me.

I held her eye.

“Sally Ehlers,” I said, “have you lived in the desert all your life and been fooled by fool’s gold?”

She smiled.

“George found it,” she said.

The plane slanted down from the cloudless blue of the California sky, to drop to a three-point landing as gracefully as a seagull dropping to a sand bar.

Pete Ringley was the first one out of the plane. He ran across the cement and grabbed his boy by the arms. They looked in each other’s eyes for a moment and then started pumping hands up and down. Sally Ehlers came over and Pete Ringley threw an arm around her. I walked up and caught the glint in Pete’s eyes.

“You damned old pirate,” he said. “I should have you arrested.”

“Remember the woodwork in your study, Pete?” I asked.

He looked at me, wondering if perhaps I had gone entirely crazy.

I nodded toward the boy.

“Take another look at him, Pete,” I said.

Sally Elders burst into rapid-fire conversation.

“You’d ought to be proud of your son, Uncle Pete,” she said. “Do you know what he did single-handed and unaided? He busted up the Bill Ordway gang of claim jumpers. Here it is in the paper. Take a look for yourself.”

She whipped a copy of the Los Angeles Times from under her arm, snapped the paper open, and let Pete Ringley look at the big headlines which streamed across the front of the page with a picture of George Ringley occupying a prominent position in top center of the page.

Pete’s eyes lit with a sudden glow of pride. He grabbed the paper.

“Humph!” he said at last, when he had read the account. “And where was Bob Zane all that time?”

“I couldn’t get there, Pete,” I said. “I heard the firing, but there was nothing I could do. By the time I got started they had the place surrounded and I couldn’t get through them.”

Slowly the gleam of hostility faded from Pete Ringley’s eyes.

“I think,” he said, “I’m commencing to see.”

“Aw, it was Sally that worked the whole thing for me,” George said. “I’d never have had the courage to do it. She showed me how to build the fort and all of that stuff.”

“Who showed you how to bust out of the fort and lick Bill Ordway in a hand-to-hand battle, kid?” I asked.

He shuffled his feet and hung his head in embarrassment.

Pete Ringley looked at me and sighed.

“Well, Bob,” he said. “We’re starting all over again.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That big business deal I had on,” he said, “turned out to be a skin-game. I was the one who got skinned.”

“You mean you’ve lost money, Dad?” asked George Ringley.

“Lost money?” he said. “I’ve lost everything. I been cleaned out, lock, stock and barrel. I had enough money in my pocket to buy an airplane ticket when I got Bob Zane’s wire, and that’s about all.”

“Your wife?” I asked.

A look of pain clouded his eyes for a moment, then he shrugged his shoulders and made a spreading gesture with his hands.

“She was a city woman,” he said, as though by way of extenuation.

Sally Ehlers gripped his arm.

“But,” she said, “you’ve got the Chuckwalla claims. Bob Zane located them in your joint names.”

Pete Ringley looked at me.

I managed to look glum.

“Yes, Pete,” I said, “I located them, but they didn’t look so good when I made a second survey of the property. I’m afraid that ore doesn’t run uniform.”

Sally Ehlers gave a gasp.

“Why, Uncle Bob,” she said, “I thought the claims were going to be bonanzas.”

“You never can tell about gold, Sally,” I told her.

“Well,” Pete said, “let’s get started somewhere. We can’t stick around here, and I don’t like the noise of civilization. I want to get out in the desert where it’s silent.”

The two young folks walked on ahead. Pete Ringley fell into step beside me.

“Listen, you old sidewinder,” he said, “what the hell’s the idea about that second survey of the claims? We made a complete survey that first time.”

I grinned at him.

“You know, Pete,” I said, “I think when she comes to think it over, Sally Ehlers might feel a little embarrassed if the son of a millionaire should propose to her to-night. She’d probably turn him down just to make sure that she wasn’t marrying for money. But if she thought that he was the son of a poor desert prospector...”

I broke off and shrugged my shoulders.

Pete looked over at me and a slow grin came over his face.

“And those claims are just as good as they ever were?” he asked.

I gripped his arm.

“A damn sight better,” I told him.

He heaved a deep sigh.

“All right,” he said, “let’s get out of these damn dude duds and get out in the desert where we can hear the silence.”

I nodded toward the couple on ahead.

“Why the devil do you suppose we filled the gas tank before we drove up to the airport?” I asked. “You bet your life we’re headed for the desert.”