The vision of gold and pearls Doc Stooder had seen in the depths of raw alcohol on a night of dreaming in his office had become a goad. So he came to Cuprico, the ghost town not seventy miles away from the supposed site of the buried mission; his intent was to pick up his Papago informant, who lived midway between Cuprico and the Border, and, as Stooder happily phrased his purpose, “give things a look-see.” If his luck was with him and he should stumble onto the mission during this solo game so much the better. Conscience nor maxims of fair play were any part of the doctor’s moral anatomy. The Doc upon his arrival did not pervade Cuprico’s centres of evening society--the Golden Star pool hall and soft drinks emporium and the back room of Garcia’s drug store--for reasons sufficiently potent to merit a paragraph of explanation. Years before, when he was a resident of the mining camp and had money, Doc Stooder took unto himself a Mexican wife who had a passion for diamonds. Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder had a way with her which seemed to win deep into the atrophied heart of her spouse, and he showered her with the stones of her choice. No woman from Yuma to Tucson--so legend still recites--“packed so much ice” as Doc Stooder’s. Then in an epidemic of typhoid, which the Doc combated with the heroism of a saint, Apolinaria died. Alone and with his own hands her sorrowing widower gave her sepulchre somewhere amid the gaunt hills surrounding the town. He let it become known after the interment that since Apolinaria loved her diamonds so he had buried them with her, adding for good measure of gossip that he figured their total value at round $5000. Immediately and for several years thereafter all the prospectors for fifty miles about gave up their search for dip and strike and prospected for Mrs. Apolinaria Stooder. Failing to find so much as a “colour” of her diamonds, the profession drew the conclusion that Doc Stooder was a monumental liar. His popularity waned accordingly. Shadows were lengthening when Stooder tooled a rented desert skimmer out of Cuprico’s single garage and brought it to a stop before the general store. Into the wagon box behind the seat went his bed roll, brought from Arizora and containing certain glassware whose contents were more precious to their owner than life itself; boxes of grocery staples; extra cans of oil and gasoline. Two big canteens on the running board were filled. Plugs of chewing tobacco heavy and broad as slate shingles were stowed in the tool box. In all this preparation the doctor’s long legs calipered themselves from counter to car with remarkable efficiency. “Goin’ on a little prospecting trip?” the storekeeper had volunteered when the Doc first commenced his stowing. No answer.