This country was crisscrossed by trails, and, arid desert though it was, every few miles showed an abandoned mine, or a prospector working a claim, or a shack containing a desert dweller. Adam and Dismukes were approaching the highway that bisected the Mohave Desert. It grew to be more of a sandy country, and anywhere in sand, water was always scarce. Another of Dismukes’ water holes was dry. It had not been visited for months. The one wanderer who had stopped there lay there half buried in the sand, a shrunken mummy of a man, with a dark and horrible mockery in the eyeless sockets of his skull. His skin was drawn like light-brown parchment over his face. Adam looked, and then again, and gave a sudden start. He turned the sun-dried visage more to the light. He recognized that face, set in its iron mask of death, with its grin that would grin forever until the brown skull went to dust. “Regan!” he exclaimed. “You know him?” queried Dismukes. “Yes. He was an Irishman I knew years ago. A talky, cheerful fellow. Hard drinker. He loved the desert, but drink kept him in the mining camps. The last time I saw him was at Tecopah, after you left.” “Poor devil! He died of thirst. I know that cast of face.... Let’s give him decent burial.” “Yes. Poor Regan! He was the man who named me Wansfell. Why he called me that I never knew--never will know.” Deep in the sand they buried the remains of Regan and erected a rude cross to mark his lonely grave. Dismukes led Adam off the well-beaten trail one day, up a narrow sandy wash to a closed pocket that smelled old and musty. Here a green spring bubbled from under a bank of sand. Water clear as crystal, slightly green in tinge, sparkled and murmured. A whitish sediment bordered the tiny stream of running water. “Arsenic!” exclaimed Adam. “Yes. An’ here’s where I found a whole caravan of people dead. It was six years ago. Place hasn’t changed much. Guess it’s filled up a little with blowin’ sand.... Aha! Look here!” Dismukes put the toe of his boot against a round white object protruding from the sand. It was a bleached skull. “Men mad with desert thirst never stop to read,” replied Adam, sadly. In silence Adam and Dismukes gazed down at the glistening white skull. Ghastly as it was, it yet had beauty. Once it had been full of thought, of emotion; and now it was tenanted by desert sand. Adam and Dismukes spent half a day at that arsenic spring, under the burning sun, suffering the thirst they dared not slake there, and they erected a rude cross that would stand for many and many a day. Deep in the crosspiece Adam cut the words: “DEATH! ARSENIC SPRING! DON’T DRINK! GOOD WATER FIVE MILES. FOLLOW DRY STREAM BED.” Dismukes appeared to get deep satisfaction and even happiness out of this accomplished task. It was a monument to the end of his desert experience. Good will toward his fellow men! * * * * *