So Charley Jim characterized Dismukes. Evidently there had been some just cause, which he did not explain, for his bringing Dismukes into this hidden canyon. And also there was some significance in his bringing Adam there. Many had been the rewards of Charley Jim and his family for saving and succoring Adam. “Indian show Eagle heap gold,” said Charley Jim, and led him to another gully opening down into the canyon. In the dry sand and gravel of this wash Adam found gold. The discovery gave him a wonderful thrill. But it did not drive him mad. Adam divined in the dark, impassive face of his guide something of the Indian’s contempt for a white man’s frenzy over gold. Then the chief said in his own tongue that the Indian paid his debt to friend and foe, good for good and evil for evil--that there were white men to whom he could trust the secret treasures of the desert. * * * * * The day came when something appeared to stimulate the wandering spirit of the Coahuila chief. Taking his family and Adam, he began a nomadic quest for change of scene and work and idleness. The life suited Adam, for he knew Charley Jim did not frequent the trails of white men. * * * * * No time so swiftly fleeting as days and nights out in new and strange places of the desert! Adam kept track of time by the coming and going of the white crowns of snow on the peaks, and by the green and gold and then barren gray of the cottonwoods. Like coming home was it to get back to the oasis in the canyon of the Chocolate range. Adam loved the scene of his torture. Every stone, every tree, was a familiar friend, and seemed to whisper welcome to him. Here also had passed the long, long months of mental anguish. On this flat rock he had sat a whole day in hopeless pain. In this sandy-floored aisle of palms he had walked hour by hour, through many weary days, possessed by the demon of remorse. Best of all, out there reached the gray, endless expanse of desert, so lonely and melancholy and familiar, extending away to the infinitude of purple distance; and there loomed the lofty, bare heights of rock which, when he scaled them as an Indian climbing to meet his spirits, seemed to welcome him with sweet, cold winds in his face. How he thrilled at sight of the winding gleam of the Rio Colorado! What a shudder, as keen and new a pang as ever, wrenched him at sight of Picacho! It did not change. Had he expected that? It towered there in the dim lilac colors of the desert horizon, colossal and commanding, immutable and everlasting, like the sin he had committed in its shadow. Somewhere in the shadow of that doomed and turreted peak lay the grave of his brother Guerd.