Where had he gone, and why? The chieftain said they had forced the man to give them half the dust which he had found with his placer mining, and that, not being content with this arrangement, he had gone off to a place where he thought he would find more silver and have to part with none of it. This seemed to provoke much amusement among the staid Apaches; the younger braves rocked with merriment. Taking Steven and Juan to a high point of rock upon the mountain-side, the interpreter pointed their gaze across the plain south and westward, where a shining space was seen upon the desert. He spoke rapidly. Juan turned to Steven. “He says that below lie the White Sands. They are a place of death. Naught grows there, naught dwells there, but the spirits of the departed and of the desert. There is a legend that the shining sands are half silver; that if sifted they would yield pure silver dust. See how they shine from here, he says, and on windy days the white grains have been borne clear across the desert and up into the mountains, where they have lain thick on the tepees of the Apache. It is the spirits of the desert seeking to return home to the mountains, many say.” That was where James Bragdon, the Yankee, had gone with his little boy. Why bother to kill the white man? The desert would attend to him; and if he escaped its embracing sands--two of the half-bloods from the northern town Indians, they who had mingled with the Spanish, would find him. These two had come but a few hours after the white man left and had followed on his trail. Footsore and angry, for they had thought to overtake him within a day or two days of their starting, and they had been after him now for nearly a moon. Blood silver they sought to gain, but they could not lay it across their itching palms until they had the white man’s scalp to show in proof of his death. Yes, the half-breed Mexicans had told the Apache chieftain all about it, offering turquoise and wampum for this same information of the white man’s course. As Steven stood upon the mountain-side, looking out over that vast plain, seventy-five leagues from one mountain range to another, his imagination pictured the face of the boy Doren rising in the shimmering heat waves. He gave the Apache the silver beads which he wore beneath his deerskin shirt, and he and Juan turned back down the mountain trail. They could not hope to reach that far place of gleaming death until another day had dawned, nevertheless they kept their horses moving steadily until dark fell. They ate, and rode again, until the bright moon sank behind the mountains and the mesa was plunged into darkness.