Now the wounded man sent a final summons to his last reservoir of strength. Slowly--slowly he forced the little Spaniard out of the patio and down the long corridor toward the front door of the house. When Benicia came running with two husky Indians they found Grant with his man waiting before the heavy oaken portal. One of the Indians swung back the door. Grant gave a supreme heave and the colonel went sprawling like a straddle bug out onto the gravel. The great door slammed behind him. CHAPTER XII DESERT SECRETS Consider now the interesting activities of Doc Stooder, fallen angel of Æsculapius: On a March evening of sunset splendour the worthy doctor descended from the single combination coach and baggage car which a suffering locomotive drags once daily from a junction point on the transcontinental line south through naked battalions of mountains to the ghost town of Cuprico. Once Cuprico was famous; once when primitive steam shovels nibbled at solid mountains of copper up back of Main Street Cuprico roared with a life that was dizzy and vaunted itself the rip-roarin’est copper camp in all the Southwest. But the glory that was Cuprico passed, even as that of Rome; to-day they tell of the town that when its mayor fell dead on the post office steps his body remained undiscovered for three days. No romantic craving for revisiting scenes of his youth had prompted the Doc to his journey Cupricoward--he had been its premier stud player in a day of glory fifteen years before. No, a far more material urge had ended a period of fretting in Arizora by shunting him on a westward-wending train. For a week Bim Bagley, his partner in a secret enterprise, had been absent on his quest of El Doctor Coyote Belly and the New York engineer, Bim’s friend, who was reported to be wounded and under the care of the Papago medicine man. Ten days prior to Bagley’s excursion into Sonora had been frittered away in groping for information concerning this vanished engineer. All precious time wasted! It has, perhaps, become apparent that Doc Stooder was not enthusiastic over the inclusion of Grant Hickman, the Easterner, in his golden scheme of treasure trove in desert sands. The stubborn refusal of Bim Bagley to move without this fellow Hickman’s being party to the enterprise had prevented a start on the expedition for the Mission of the Four Evangelists six weeks before. The canny physician--whose share in the joint endeavour was to be his exclusive information concerning the whereabouts of the Lost Mission--possessed in large degree that sense of divination bestowed upon folk of the desert which gives their imagination wings over the horizon of time. Each day of delay he read a day to the advantage of Don Padraic O’Donoju, certain sure as he was that the master of the desert oasis had come by knowledge of his own treasure hunt intent through mysterious desert channels.