“I will, till I can find you one,” he replied, stoutly. “Oh, never look for one--then I _will_ have all I want!” * * * * * The last sunlight, the last starlight night, the last sunrise for Adam and Genie at the oasis, were beautiful memories of the past. Adam, driving the burros along the dim old Indian trail, meditated on the inevitableness of the end of all things. For nearly three years he had seen that trail every few days and always he had speculated on the distant time when he would climb it with Genie. That hour had struck. Genie, with the light feet of an Indian, was behind him, now chattering like a magpie and then significantly silent. She had her bright face turned to the enchanting adventures of the calling future; she was turning her back upon the only home she could remember. “Look, Genie, how gray and dry the canyon is,” said Adam, hoping to divert her. “Just a little water in that white wash, and you know it never reaches the valley. It sinks in the sand.... Now look way above you--high over the foothills. See those gleams of white--those streaks of black.... Snow, Genie, and the pines and spruces!” They camped at the edge of the spruces and pines. How sweet and cool and damp the air to desert dwellers! The wind sang through the trees with different tone. Adam, unpacking the burros, turned them loose, sure of their delight in the rich green grass. Genie, tired out with the long climb, fell upon one of the open packs to rest. With his rifle Adam strode away among the scattered pines and clumps of spruce. The smell of this forest almost choked him, yet it seemed he could not smell and breathe enough. The dark-green, spear-pointed spruces and the brown-barked pines, so lofty and spreading, intoxicated his desert eyes. He looked and reveled, forgetting the gun in his hands, until his aimless steps frightened deer from right before him. Then, to shoot was habit, the result of which was regret. These deer were tame, not like the wary, telescope-eyed mountain sheep; and Adam, after his first exultant thrill--the old recurrent thrill from out the past--gazed down with sorrow at the sleek, beautiful deer he had slain. What dual character he had--what contrast of thrill and pang, of blood and brain, of desert and civilization, of physical and spiritual, of nature and--But he did not know what! He laughed later, and Genie laughed, too, at how ravenous he was at supper, how delicious the venison tasted, how good it was to eat. “Guess I’ll give myself up as a bad job,” he told her. “Wanny, for me you’ll always be Taquitch, giant of the desert and god of the clouds.” “Ah! You’ll forget me in ten days after you meet _him_!” replied Adam, somewhat bitterly. Genie could only stare her amaze. “Forgive me, child. I don’t mean that. I know you’ll never forget me.... But you’ve been my--my little girl so long that it hurts to think of your being some other man’s.”