The Desert Rat was a true son of the desert. To him the scowl of the sun-baked land at midday had always turned to a smile of promise at dawn; to him the darkest night was but the forerunner of another day of glorious battle, when he could rise out of the sage, stretch his young legs and watch the sun rise over his empire. He knew the desert--he saw the issue now, but still he did not falter. “Poor little wife,” he mumbled; “poor little unborn baby! You'll hope, through the long years, waiting for me to come back--and you'll never know!” His faltering gaze wandered down the canyon where his own tracks and those of the dead shone gray against the brown of the sun-swept wash. He had followed a trail that might have been ten years old; perhaps, in the years to come, some other wanderer would see _his_ tracks, halting, staggering, uncertain, blazing the ancient call of the desert: “Come to me or I perish.” And following the trail, even as the Desert Rat had followed this other, he, too, in his own time, would come at length to the finish--and wonder. The Desert Rat sighed, but if in that supreme moment he wept it was not for himself. He had many things to think of, he had much of happiness to renounce, but he was of that breed that dares to approach the end. Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch. About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. For him the trail had ended here, as it had for this other remnant of vanished life that lay before him now with arms outstretched. The Desert Rat stared at the relic. A cross! The body formed a cross! Here again was The Promise-- A thought came to the perishing wanderer. “I'll leave a message” he gobbled. He could not forbear a joke. “To be delivered when called for” he added. “This other man might have done the same, but perhaps he didn't care--perhaps there wasn't anybody waiting at home for him.” From his shirt pocket he drew the stub of a lead pencil and the note-book in which he had written his will and the record of his betrayal. He added the story of his wanderings since leaving Chuckwalla Tanks, and the postscript: The company in which I will be found was not of my own seeking. He was here before me by several years and I found nothing whereby he might be identified. He tore the leaves out of the note-book, stuffed them inside his empty canteen and screwed the cap on tight; after which he cast about for a prominent place where he might leave his last message to the world.