And yet, if it hadn’t been for the curious sensitiveness within him that registered Mr. Leadley’s feelings, Elbert would have thought that the other was merely recalling matters of pleasantness from years ago. Finally one evening, after talk touching Bart’s prolonged stay below the Border, Elbert said: ‘I’d certainly like to get somewhere down in Sonora.’ ‘Don’t you ever draw a vacation at your store?’ Elbert laughed. ‘I’ve only been there a few weeks.’ ‘I’d hate to cause any disaster in the leather business--’ ‘How do you mean?’ The other’s voice became husky with strain. ‘I was thinkin’ as a starter, possibly, you might come over to my claim on your vacation.’ It began to appear more and more feasible as they talked. Directions opened right here at the Plaza. Elbert was told that an old friend and mining partner of Mr. Leadley’s--Mort Cotton, now a cattleman, the same to whom the saddle had been shipped--would meet him at San Forenso and drive him up as far as the road went on the way to the mine. ‘That’s at Slim Stake Camp,’ Mr. Leadley added. ‘From there you just keep on hikin’ up the canyon trail till you come to White Stone Flats, where I’ll be watchin’ for you--’ It sounded somewhat complicated to Elbert. ‘But suppose I should miss the trail?’ he said. ‘I can’t see how you could, unless you got headstrong--’ ‘But how am I to know when I get to White Stone Flats?’ ‘By composin’ yourself to listen a little longer. First you see two big pines less’n twenty feet apart, still alive, but showing marks of a forest fire ten or twelve years back.’ ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how a tree would look, twelve years after a forest fire--’ ‘Right, you wouldn’t, but that ain’t all to go by. It is a Flats, remember, and on the Flats is a lot of big white stones, and printed on the biggest of ’em in black letters, “ARE YOU DOOMED?”’ Elbert saw himself getting there. ‘... humorist--now I wonder?’ Mr. Leadley went on. ‘Or just a pious gent coming up into Nineveh, as if sent for? “Are You Doomed?”--he paints, right on the big stone facin’ the trail, and a little ways off on a smaller stone, he fixes the answer: “JESUS SAVES.” That there handwritin’ on the rock seems to be for me, ’cause every time I go for water--there it is. But as I was sayin’, you’ll know you’re comin’ to the Flats when you get to the last water.’ ‘How shall I know it’s the last water?’ ‘’Cause pretty soon after that you’ll come to the Flats. Anyway, I’d be watchin’ on the day set--’