Adam did not soon tire at his gigantic task. The rolling stones fascinated him. From dead things they leaped to life. How they hurtled through space! Some shot aloft a hundred feet. Others split, and rolled, like wheels, down and down, the halves passing on either side of the doomed Virey. A multitude of rocks Adam turned loose, and then another multitude. Into the heaving of every one went his intent to kill. But Virey bore a charmed life. A time came when Adam rolled his last stone. Like the very first one, it sped straight for Virey, and just as it appeared about to crush him it veered to one side. Adam stared grim and aghast. Could he never kill Virey as Virey had murdered his wife and tried to kill him? “She--said I’d--never kill--you!” panted Adam, and the doubt in him was a strange, struggling thing, soon beaten down by his insatiable rage. Then he took a stride downward, meaning to descend and finish Virey with his hands. As he stepped down the avalanche below grated with strange, harsh sound. It seemed to warn him. Halting, he gazed with clearer eyes. What was this change in Virey? Adam bent and peered. Had the man’s hair turned snow white? Adam made another and a longer stride downward. And that instant the slope trembled. Virey flung up his arms as if to ward off another rolling stone. A rending, as of the rock-bound fastness of the slope yielding its hold--then the avalanche, with Virey in the center, moved downward, slowly heaving like a swell of weighted waves, and started to roll with angry roar. It gathered a ponderous momentum. It would never stop again on that slope. A shining, red-tinged dust cloud shrouded Virey. And then the avalanche, spilling over the declivity below, shocked the whole mountain slope and lifted to the heavens a thick-crashing, rolling roar of thunder. Death Valley engulfed the hollow echo and boomed thunder across to the battlements of the Funeral Mountains. And when the last rumble wore away, silence and solitude reigned there, pervasive and peaceful, as they had in the ages before man, with his passions, had evolved to vex nature. CHAPTER XX Adam’s return to camp was as vague as one of his desert nightmares. But as thought gained something of ascendency over agitation he became aware of blood and dust and sweat caked with his clothes upon his person, proving the effect of his supreme exertions. He had heaved an endless number of rocks; he had heaved the mountain-side down upon Virey, all to no avail. A higher power had claimed him. And the spirit of Magdalene Virey, like her living presence, had inscrutably come between Adam and revenge. * * * * * When Adam had packed his burros, twilight in the clefts of the hills had deepened to purple. He filled his canteens, and started the burros down toward the gateway. The place behind him was as silent as a grave. Adam did not look back. He felt the gray obscurity close over the scene.