The long night wore on with the heavens star-fired by its golden train, and the sounds at last yielding to the desert silence. Adam could see Dismukes, a wide, prone figure, with dark face upturned to the sky, a man seemingly as strange and strong as the wastelands he talked so much about, yet now helpless in sleep, unguarded, unconscious, wrapped in his deep dreams of the joy and life his gold was to bring him. Adam felt a yearning pity for this dreamer. Did he really love gold or was his passion only a dream? Whatever that was and whatever the man was, there rested upon his ragged, dark face a shadow of tragedy. Adam wondered what his own visage would reflect when he lay asleep, no more master of a mind that never rested? The look of an eagle? So Dismukes had said, and that was not the first time Adam had heard such comparison. He had seen desert eagles, dead and alive. He tried to recall how they looked, but the images were not convincing. The piercing eye, clear as the desert air, with the power of distance in the gray depths; the lean, long lines; the wild poise of head, bitter and ruthless and fierce; the look of loneliness--these characters surely could not be likened to his face. What a strange coincidence that Dismukes should hit upon the likeness of an eagle--the winged thunderbolt of the heights--the lonely bird Adam loved above all desert creatures! And so Adam wandered in mind until at last he fell asleep. CHAPTER XIII When Adam awoke he saw that Dismukes had breakfast steaming on the fire. “I’m on my way to-day,” announced the prospector. “What’ll you do?” “Well, I’ll hang around Tecopah as long as I can stand it,” replied Adam. “Humph! That won’t be long, unless you got in mind somethin’ like you did at the Donner Placers, down in the Providence Mountains.” “Friend, what do you know about that?” queried Adam. “Nothin’. I only heard about it.... Wansfell, do you pan any gold?” “Sometimes, when I happen to run across it,” replied Adam, “but that isn’t often.” “Do you work?” “Yes, I’ve worked a good deal, taking it all together. In the mines, on the river at Needles, driving mule teams and guiding wagon trains. Never got paid much, though.” “How do you live?” asked Dismukes, evidently curious. “Oh, I fare well enough to keep flesh on my bones.” “You’ve got flesh--or I reckon it’s muscle. Wansfell, you’re the best-built man I ever saw on the desert. Most men dry up an’ blow away.... Will you let me give you--lend you some money?” “Money! So that’s why you’re so curious?” responded Adam. “Thanks, my friend. I don’t need money. I had some, you know, when you ran across me down in the Chocolates. I used about a thousand dollars while I lived with the Coahuila Indians. And I’ve got nine thousand left.” “Say, you don’t pack all that money along with you?” “Yes. Where else would I keep it?” “Wansfell, some of these robbers will murder you.”