“Ahuh! I reckon not,” said Dismukes, just as grimly. “Well, last time I was over there--let’s see, it was in September, hotter ’n hell, an’ I run across two queer people up in a canyon I’d never prospected before. Didn’t see any sign of any other prospectors ever bein’ in there.... Two queer people--a man an’ a woman livin’ in a shack they’d built right under the damnedest roughest slope of weathered rock you ever saw in your life. Why, it was a plain case of suicide, an’ so I tried to show them! Every hour you could hear the crack of a rollin’ bowlder or the graty slip of an avalanche, gettin’ oneasy an’ wantin’ to slide. But the woman was deathly afraid of her husband an’ he was a skunk an’ a wolf rolled into a man, if I ever saw one. I couldn’t do anythin’ for the poor woman, an’ I couldn’t learn any more than I’m tellin’ you. That’s not much. But, Wansfell, she wasn’t a common sort. She’d been beautiful once. She had the saddest face I ever saw. I got two feelin’s, one that she wasn’t long for this earth, an’ the other that the man hated her with a terrible hate.... I meet with queer people an’ queer situations as I wander over this desert, but here’s the beat of all my experience. An’, Wansfell, I’d like to have you go see that couple. I reckon they’ll be there, if alive yet. He chose a hidden spot, an’ he has Shoshone Indians pack his supplies in from the ranches way on the other side of the Panamints. A queer deal, horrible for that poor woman, an’ I’ve been haunted by her face ever since. I’d like you to go there.” “I’ll go. But why do you say that, Dismukes?” asked Adam, curiously. “Well--you ought to know what your name means to desert men,” replied Dismukes, constrainedly, and he looked down at the camp fire, to push forward a piece of half-burnt wood. “No, I never heard,” said Adam. “I’ve lived ’most always alone. Of course I’ve had to go to freighting posts and camps. I’ve worked in gold diggings. I’ve guided wagon trains across the Mohave. Naturally, I’ve been among men. But I never heard that my name meant anything.” “Wansfell! I remember _now_ that you called yourself Wansfell. I’ve heard that name. Some of your doings, Wansfell, have made camp-fire stories. See here, Wansfell, you won’t take offense at me.”