“Say, Wansfell! Am I drunk or are you a mind reader?” demanded the prospector, bewildered. “Comin’ along here I was thinkin’ about that five hundred thousand. But I never told anyone--except a boy once--an’ he’s dead.” “How about your white-faced burro Jinny--the one that used to steal things out of your pack?” asked Adam, slowly. “Jinny! Jinny!” ejaculated Dismukes, with a start. His great ox eyes dilated and something of shock ran through his huge frame. “That burro I never forgot. I gave her away to a boy who starved on the desert. She came back to me. Tracked me to Yuma.... An’ you--you--how’d you know Jinny?... Man, who are you?” “Dismukes, I was the boy you saved--down under the Chocolates--ninety miles from Yuma. Remember ... it was Jinny saw me wandering in a circle, mad with thirst. You saved me--gave me Jinny and a pack--told me how to learn the desert--sent me to the Indians.... Dismukes, I was that boy. I am now--Wansfell.” The prospector seemed to expand with the increased strain of his gaze into Adam’s eyes, until the instant of recognition. “By God! I know you now!” he boomed, and locked his horny hands on Adam in a gladness that was beyond the moment and had to do, perhaps, with a far-past faith in things. “I thought you died on the desert. Jinny’s comin’ back seemed proof of that.... But you lived! You--that boy, tall as a mescal plant--with eyes of agony.... I never forgot.... An’ now you’re Wansfell!” “Yes, my friend. Life is strange on the desert,” replied Adam. “And now unpack your burros. Make camp with me here. We’ll eat and talk together.” A sunset, rare on the Mohave, glowed over the simple camp tasks of these men who in their wanderings had met again. Clouds hung along the mountain tops, colored into deeper glory as the sun sank. The dark purples had an edge of silver, and the fleecy whites turned to pink and rose, while golden rays shot up from behind the red-hazed peaks. Over the valley fell a beautiful and transparent light, blending and deepening until a shadow as blue as the sea lay on Tecopah. While the men ate their frugal repast they talked, each gradually growing used to a situation that broke the desert habit of silence. There was an unconscious deference of each man toward the other--Wansfell seeing in Dismukes the savior of his life and a teacher who had inspired him to scale the heights of human toil and strife; Dismukes finding in Wansfell a development of his idea, the divine spirit of man rising above the great primal beasts of the desert, self-preservation and ferocity. “Wansfell, have you kept track of time?” asked Dismukes, reflectively, as he got out a black, stumpy pipe that Adam remembered. “No. Days and weeks glide into years--that’s all I can keep track of,” replied Adam.