“There’s a whole lot, Melody, I can never pay you for, even with two millions and a bunch of five-per-cent bonds! Where are you, Melody, in all this wide world?” Suddenly he stopped, and stood very still. Then, slapping his thigh, he shouted into the dawn: “Why, Monument! Monument, Arizona! That’s it! That’s what the old boy was trying to say at the very end, when he was too far gone to make himself clearly understood. He was trying to give me the address, of course!” The _gendarme_, thinking there must be something wrong with a young man who acted in this fashion, followed Brainard to his hotel, whither, now that he had solved his puzzle, he went at a brisk pace. XX To get to that pin-prick on the map called Monument, Arizona, you drop off the railroad at Defiance, which is somewhere east of the water tank named Phantom, and then follow an old post road across the lofty plateau in the direction of the mountains to the southwest. After something more than twenty miles, the trail strikes a deeply sunk river bed that winds like a gigantic serpent over the desert toward the declining sun. In one of the coils of this dead river serpent lies what is left of the mining camp of Monument. From the dusty trail over the alkali plain Brainard emerged one blazing July afternoon, saddle-sore after his unaccustomed exercise, and red-faced from the pitiless glare of the Arizona sun. As he climbed the rocky path on the farther side of the river bed, the sun was sinking in a gorgeous sky behind the wooden shacks of Monument. The place had the desolate air of a mining camp that had been smothered before its boom had really come. The stack of a large smelter rose from a group of corrugated iron buildings at the further end. Beyond, on the summit of a curious detached mound, set quite apart from all other features of the landscape, there was a considerable mansion with tall pillars along its southern front. This, Brainard surmised, must have been the residence of the owner or the manager of the mine, and his present goal. Apparently Monument had not enough life left to bestir itself, even on the arrival of a stranger. Brainard slid from his horse unobserved in front of the Waldorf Hotel, which was apparently the most pretentious hostelry in the town. Inside the Waldorf, a Chinaman was serving a customer with a meal of fried steak and liver-colored pie. The only other person in the establishment was a fat Irishwoman dozing in one corner of the large bar-room, to which the Chinaman referred the stranger, with a silent nod. The landlady—for such he took her to be—looked at Brainard stupidly, and to his request for a room merely dropped her head on her ample breast and resumed her nap.