Gary woke with the dream so vivid in his mind that he could scarcely reason himself out of the belief that Steve Carson had actually talked with him. Gary lay thinking of Sir Ernest Shackleton, of whose voyages to the Antarctic he had read again and again. He recalled how close Shackleton and his companions had shaved starvation, not from necessity, but from choice, in the interests of science. He tried to guess what Shackleton would do, were he in Gary’s predicament, with four candles and the stub of a fifth in his possession, and approximately two gallons of water. “I bet he’d go strong for several days yet,” Gary whispered. “He’d cut the candles into little bits and eat one piece and call it a meal. And he’d figure out just how many wallops he could give that damned rock on the strength of his gorgeous feed of one inch of candle. And then, when he’d dined on the last wick and hit the rock a last wallop, he’d grin and say it had been a great game.” He turned painfully over upon the other side and laid his face upon his bent arm. “Shackleton never was shut up in a hole a hundred miles from nowhere,” he murmured, “with nobody knowing a word about it but a pinto cat that’s crazy over spiritualism. If Shackleton was here, I bet he’d say, ‘Eat the candles, boy, and take your indigestion all at one time and finish the game.’ No use dragging out the suspense till the audience gets the gapes. First time I ever starred in a story that had an unhappy ending. I didn’t think the Big Director would do it!” He lay for a time dozing and trying to forget the terrible gnawing in his stomach. Then his thoughts wandered on and he mumbled, “I’m not kicking--if this is the way it’s supposed to be. But I did want Pat to have her gold mine. And now the location work is all covered up--so maybe it won’t count. And some other gink will maybe come along and jump the claim, and my Pat won’t get her gold mine. I guess it’s all right. But I didn’t think the Big Director would do this!” CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT MONTY MEETS PATRICIA Monty had made up his mind to go on to Los Angeles and see for himself why Patricia would not answer his telegram, when he received the word that she was coming from Kansas City. He swore a good deal over the delay that would hold him inactive in town. To fill in the time he wrote a long letter to the sheriff in Tonopah, stating all the facts in the case so far as he knew them. He hoped that the sheriff was already on his way to Johnnywater, though Monty could not have told just what he expected the sheriff to accomplish when he arrived there. He tried to trace James Blaine Hawkins, but only succeeded in learning from a garage man that Hawkins had come in off the desert at least three weeks before, cursed the roads and the country in general and had left for Los Angeles. Or at least that was the destination he had named.