“Thirty cents,” Charlie said. “Why, it’s only 18 in the city,” the man flared. “How far is it to the next gas?” Charlie told him, and Big Dan sitting beside me muttered: “Dam’ fool’ll pay 50 cents up there.” The driver climbed into the car and Charlie asked if he had plenty of water. “A gallon can full....” “Not enough,” Charlie warned. A fellow in the back seat spoke, “Aw, go on. He wants to sell a canteen....” As the car pulled out, Joe called to Charlie: “You’re sold out of canteens, ain’t you?” “Yes. But I was going to give him one of those old five gallon cans on the dump.” He went inside and Joe Ryan said, “Won’t get far on a gallon of water.” He waved his knife toward the little cemetery at the mouth of the gulch. “Lot of smart Alecs like him up there, that Charlie dragged in offa the desert.” It was five days almost to the hour when Ann Cowboy, a Piute squaw came to the store with an Indian boy who couldn’t speak English; nodded at the boy and said to Charlie: “Him see....” She pointed to the big black mountain of malpai above Shoshone, whirled her finger in a circle, shot it this way and that, then patted the floor. “You savvy?” Her dark eyes watched Charlie’s and when she had finished Charlie called Joe Ryan and together they went across the road, climbed into a pickup truck and left in a hurry. Even I understood that somebody on the other side of that mountain was in trouble, but I had no idea that in three or four hours the pickup would return with a cadaver under a tarpaulin and a thirst-crazed survivor whose distorted features bore little resemblance to those of man. Big Dan helped lift the victim from the truck. “There were three,” Dan said. “Where is the other fellow?” “We looked all over,” Joe shrugged. “The one that’s missing,” Dan said, “is the fellow that griped about the canteen. I remember his black hair.” They carried the still-living man over to Charlie’s house and left him to the ministrations of the capable Stella. Charlie returned to the store, got a pick and shovel from a rack, handed one to Ben Brandt and one to Cranky Casey. Not a word was spoken to them. They took the tools and started toward the little cemetery at the mouth of Dublin Gulch. I joined Dan on the bench. “Well,” Dan said, “they saved the price of a canteen.” Two spinsters—teachers of zoology in a fashionable eastern school for girls—came in search of a place they called Metbury Springs. Brown told them there were no such springs in the Death Valley region. Obviously disappointed, one produced a map, spread it on the counter, ran her finger over a maze of notes and looking up asked what sort of rats lived about Shoshone. Charlie told them that very few rats survived their natural enemies and were seldom seen. “What do they look like?” the teacher asked. “Just regular rats,” Charlie told her. Again she consulted her notes. “Do you mean to say the only rat you’ve seen here is _Mus decumanus_?”