Adam shook his head. “I’m no farther than you, Dismukes, though I think differently about life and death.... I’ve fought to live on this wasteland, but I’ve fought hardest to think. It seems that always nature strikes me with its terrible mace! I have endless hours to look at the desert and I see what you see--the strange ferocity of it all--the fierce purpose. No wonder you say the desert stamps a man!” “Aye! An’ woman, too! Take this she-devil who runs a place here in Tecopah--Mohave Jo is the name she bears. Have you seen her?” “No, but I’ve heard of her. At Needles I met the wife of a miner, Clark, who’d been killed here at Tecopah.” “Never heard of Clark. But I don’t doubt the story. It’s common enough--miners bein’ killed an’ robbed. There’s a gang over in the Panamints who live on miners.” “I’m curious to see Mohave Jo,” said Adam. “Well, speakin’ of this one-eyed harridan reminds me of a man I met last trip across the Salton flats, down on the Colorado. Met him at Walters--a post on the stage line. He had only one eye, too. There was a terrible scar where his eye, the right one, had been. He was one of these Texans lookin’ for a man. There seems to be possibilities of a railroad openin’ up that part of the desert. An’ this fellow quizzed me about water holes. Of course, if any one gets hold of water in that country he’ll strike it rich as gold, if the country ever opens up. It’s likely to happen, too. Well, this man had an awful face. He’d been a sheriff in Texas, some one said, an’ later at Ehrenberg. Hell on hangin’ men!... Of course I never asked him how he lost his eye. But he told me--spoke of it more than once. The deformity had affected his mind. You meet men like that--sort of crazy on somethin’. He was always lookin’ for the fellow who’d knocked out his eye. To kill him!” “Do you--recall his--name?” asked Adam, his voice halting with a thick sensation in his throat. The past seemed as yesterday. “Never was much on rememberin’ names,” responded Dismukes, scratching his shaggy head. “Let’s see--why, yes, he called himself Collis--Collis--haw. That’s it--Collishaw. Hard name to remember. But as a man he struck me easy to remember.... Well, friend Wansfell, I’ve had enough talkin’ to do me for a spell. I’m goin’ to bed.” While Adam sat beside the fire, motionless, pondering with slow, painful amaze over what he had just heard, Dismukes prepared for his night’s rest. He unrolled a pack, spread a ragged old canvas, folded a blanket upon it, and arranged another blanket to pull up over him, together with the end of the canvas. For a pillow he utilized an old coat that lay on his pack. His sole concession to man’s custom of undressing for bed was the removal of his old slouch hat. Then with slow, labored movement he lay down to stretch his huge body and pull the coverlets over him. From his cavernous breast heaved a long, deep sigh. His big eyes, dark and staring, gazed up at the brightening stars, and then they closed.