Adam listened kindly, and went slowly, with tired limbs, about the camp tasks; and now he gazed at Dismukes, and again had an eye for his surroundings. Often he gazed up at the exceedingly high, blunt break in the Funeral range. What cataclysm of nature had made that rent? It was a zigzagged saw-toothed wall, with strata slanted at an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of black and red bronze ran through the vast drab mass. The long purple shadows that Adam loved had begun to fall. Several huge bats with white heads darted in irregular flight over the camp. Adam’s hands, and his jaw, too, were swollen and painful as a result of the fight, and he served himself and ate with difficulty. And as for speech, he had little chance for that. Dismukes’ words flowed like a desert flood. The man was bewitched. He would consume moments in eloquent description of what he was going to do, then suddenly switch to an irrelevant subject. “Once, years ago, I was lost on the desert,” he said, reminiscently. “First an’ only time I ever got lost for sure. Got out of grub. Began to starve. Was goin’ to kill an’ eat my burro, when he up an’ run off. Finally got out of water. That’s the last straw, you know.... I walked all day an’ all night an’ all day, only to find myself more lost than ever. I thought I had been travelin’ toward the west to some place I’d heard of water an’ a ranch. Then I made sure I’d gone the wrong way. Staggerin’ an’ fallin’ an’ crawlin’ till near daylight, at last I gave up an’ stretched out to die. Me! I gave up--was glad to die.... I can remember the look of the pale stars--the gray mornin’ light--the awful silence an’ loneliness. Yes, I wanted to die quick.... An’ all at once I heard a rooster crow!” “Well! You’d lain down to die near a ranch. That was funny,” declared Adam. Life did play queer pranks on men. “Funny! Say, pard Wansfell, there’s nothin’ funny about death. An’ as for life, I never dreamed how glorious it is, until I heard that rooster crow. I’ll buy a farm of green an’ grassy an’ shady land somewhere in the East--land with runnin’ water everywhere--an’ I’ll raise a thousand roosters just to hear them crow.” “Thought you meant to travel,” said Adam. “Sure. But I’ll settle down sometime, I suppose,” replied Dismukes, reflectively. “Friend, will you marry?” inquired Adam, gravely. How intensely interesting was this man about to go out into the world! “Marry!--What?” ejaculated the prospector. “A woman, of course.” “My God!” rolled out Dismukes. The thought had startled him. His great ox eyes reflected changes of amazing thought, shadows of old emotions long submerged. “That’s somethin’ I never _did_ think of. Me marry a woman!... No woman would ever have me.” “Dismukes, you’re not so old. And you’ll be rich. When you wear off the desert roughness you can find a wife. The world is full of good women who need husbands.”