"Perhaps! I do not know. The man, Banker, searches, not only in the canyon but also throughout the range. And as he searches, he mutters to himself. He is a very strange man." "Most prospectors, especially the old ones, are strange. The loneliness goes to their heads." "That is true, monsieur, and it is the case with herders, as we have known. But Banker is more than queer. Once, when we were with our flocks in the Esmeraldas, we observed, one evening, a fire at some distance. My brother went over to see who it was and to invite him to share our camp if he were friendly. He came upon the man, Banker, crouched over his fire and talking to himself. He seemed to be listening to something, and he muttered strange words which my brother could not understand. Yet my brother understood one phrase which the man repeated many times. It was, as he told me, something like 'I will find it. I will find it. I will find the gold.' But he also spoke of everybody dying, and my brother was uneasy, seeing his rifle lying close at hand. He endeavored to move away, but made some noise and the man heard him. He sprang to his feet with a cry of fear and shot with his rifle in the direction of my brother. Fortunately he did not hit him and my brother fled away. In the morning we found that Banker had departed in great haste during the night as though he feared some attack." "H'm," said De Launay, "that's rather strange. But these old desert rats get strange attacks of nerves. They become very distrustful of all human beings. He was frightened." "He may have been--indeed--he was. Nevertheless, the man Banker is a violent man and very evil. When he is about, we go carefully, my brother and I. If Pierre d'Albret was shot for no reason, what is to prevent us, who are also Basques, from being treated in the same way?" "By Banker? Nonsense!" "Nonsense it may be, monsieur. Yet I do not know why it may not have been some one like Banker who shot D'Albret. But I talk too much to you because you are French." He became reticent after that, and De Launay, who, whatever he may have thought of the man's opinions, did not intend to make a confidant of him, allowed the subject to drop. He slept there that night, feeling reasonably safe from pursuit, and in the morning went on his way. But again, as he rode steadily across the alkali and sage, the lightness of heart that had long been unfamiliar, came back to him. He found himself looking back at his vague sentiment for the little girl of the years gone by and the strange notion that he must come back to her as he had so lightly promised. He had had that notion in the full belief that she must have developed as she had bade fair to do. It had been a shock to find her as she was, but, after the shock, here was that incomprehensible feeling of relief. He had not wanted to find her, after all!