But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the Doc’s rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car’s radiator to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid therein. No use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to the village of the Sand People on four wheels he’d have to give the radiator a drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago. It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced down from a gash in the mountain wall. “Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here with an outfit right soon an’ dig himself right down to them pearls. So he’s just a mite p’ticular about this map.” Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he’d set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger. The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along the main road would just’s like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps-- Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump of _cholla_ was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by fillets of creamy blossoms--grotesque masquerading of these withered old men of the wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was abroad. It came from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an oil-burning boiler.