“Wansfell, you ain’t serious?” queried Dismukes, puzzled and stirred. He ran a broad hand through his shock of grizzled hair. His eyes were beautiful then. “I never had wife or sweetheart.... No girl ever looked at me--when I was a boy. An’ these years on the desert, women have been scarce, an’ not one was ever anythin’ to me.” “Well, when you get among a lot of pretty girls, just squeeze one for me,” said Adam, with the smile that was sad. Plain it was how Adam’s attempt at pleasantry, despite its undercurrent, had opened up a vista of bewildering and entrancing prospects for Dismukes. This prospector had grown grizzled on the desert; his long years had been years of loneliness; and now the forgotten dreams and desires of youth thronged thick and sweet in his imagination. Adam left him to that engrossing fancy, hoping it would keep him content and silent for a while. A golden flare brightened over the Panamint range, silhouetting the long, tapering lines of the peaks. Far to the west, when the sun had set, floated gray and silver-edged clouds, and under them a whorl of rosy, dusky, ruddy haze. All the slopes below were beginning to be enshrouded in purple, and even while Adam watched they grew cold and dark. The heat veils were still rising, but they were from the ridges of dark-brown and pale-gray earth far this side of the mountains. Death Valley was hidden, and for that Adam was glad. The winds had ceased, the clouds of dust had long settled. It was a bold and desolate scene, of wide scope and tremendous dimensions, a big country. The afterglow of sunset transformed the clouds. Then the golden flare faded fast, the clouds paled, the purple gloom deepened. Vast black ridges of mountains stood out like ragged islands in a desolate sea. “Wansfell,” spoke up Dismukes, “you need your hair cut.” “Maybe. But I’m glad it was long to-day when I got hit with the shovel.” “You sure did come near gettin’ it cut then,” replied Dismukes, with a hard laugh. “I’ll tell you what your long hair reminds me of. Years ago I met a big fellow on the desert. Six feet three he was, an’ ’most as big as you. An’ a darn good pard on the trail. Well, he wore his hair very long. It hid his ears. An’ in the hottest weather he never let me cut it. Well, the funny part all came out one day. Not so funny for him, to think of it!... We met men on the trail. They shot him an’ were nigh on to doin’ for me.... My big pardner was a horse thief. He’d had his ears cut off for stealin’ horses. An’ so he wore his hair long like yours to hide the fact he had no ears.” “Friend Dismukes, _I_ have ears, if my long hair is worrying you,” replied Adam. “And if I had not had mighty keen ears you’d still be grinding gold for your claim jumpers.” At dusk, while the big bats darted overhead with soft swishing of wings, and the camp fire burned down to red and glowing embers, Dismukes talked and talked. And always he returned to the subject of gold and of his future.