“No offense, friend Dismukes,” replied Adam, strangely affected. Here was news that forced him to think of himself as a man somehow related to and responsible to his kind. He had gone to and fro over the trails of the desert, and many adventures had befallen him. He had lived them, with the force the desert seemed to have taught him, and then had gone his way down the lonely trails, absorbed in his secret. The years seemed less than the blowing sand. He had been an unfortunate boy burdened with a crime; he was now a matured man, still young in years, but old with the silence and loneliness and strife of the desert, gray at the temples, with that old burden still haunting him. How good to learn that strange men spoke his name with wonder and respect! He had helped wanderers as Dismukes had helped him; he had meted out desert violence to evil men who crossed his trail; he had, doubtless, done many little unremembered deeds of kindness in a barren world where little deeds might be truly overappreciated; but the name Wansfell meant nothing to him, the reputation hinted by Dismukes amazed him, strangely thrilled him; the implication of nobility filled him with sadness and remorse. What had he done with the talents given him? “Wansfell, you see--you’re somethin’ of the man I might have been,” said Dismukes, hesitatingly. “Oh no, Dismukes,” protested Adam. “You are a prospector, honest and industrious, and wealthy now, almost ready to enjoy the fruits of your long labors. Your life has a great object.... But I--I am only a wanderer of the wasteland.” “Aye, an’ therein lies your greatness!” boomed the prospector, his ox eyes dilating and flaring. “I am a selfish pig--a digger in the dirt for gold. My passion has made me pass by men, an’ women, too, who needed help. Riches--dreams!... But you--you, Wansfell--out there in the loneliness an’ silence of the wastelands--you have found God!... I said you would. I’ve met other men who had.” “No, no,” replied Adam. “You’re wrong. I don’t think I’ve found God. Not yet!... I have no religion, no belief. I can’t find any hope out there in the desert. Nature is pitiless, indifferent. The desert is but one of her playgrounds. Man has no right there. No, Dismukes, I have not found God.” “You have, but you don’t know it,” responded Dismukes, with more composure, and he began to refill a neglected pipe. “Well, I didn’t mean to fetch up such talk as that. You see, when I do fall in with a prospector once in a month of Sundays I never talk much. An’ then it’d be to ask him if he’d seen any float lately or panned any color. But you’re different. You make my mind work. An’, Wansfell, sometimes I think my mind has been crowded with a million thoughts all cryin’ to get free. That’s the desert. A man’s got to fight the desert with his intelligence or else become less than a man. An’ I always did think a lot, if I didn’t talk.”