“I’m that way, too,” replied Adam. “But a man should talk when he gets a chance. I talk to my burros, and to myself, just to hear the sound of my voice.” “Ah! Ah!” exclaimed Dismukes, with deep breath. He nodded his shaggy head. Adam’s words had struck an answering chord in his heart. “You’ve tried for gold here?” queried Adam. “No. I was here first just after the strike, an’ often since. Water’s all that ever drew me. I’d starve before I’d dig for gold among a pack of beasts. I may be a desert wolf, but I’m a lone one.” “They’re coyotes and you’re the gray wolf. I liken ’most every man I meet to some beast or creature of the desert.” “Aye, you’re right. The desert stamps a man. An’, Wansfell, it’s stamped you with the look of a desert eagle. Ha-ha! I ain’t flatterin’ to either of us, am I? Me a starved gray wolf, huntin’ alone, mean an’ hard an’ fierce! An’ you a long, lean-headed eagle, with that look of you like you were about to strike--_pong!_... Well, well, there’s no understandin’ the work of the desert. The way it develops the livin’ creatures! They all have to live, an’ livin’ on the desert is a thousand times harder than anywhere else. They all have to be perfect machines for destruction. Each seems so swift that he gets away, yet each is also so fierce an’ sure that he catches his prey. They live on one another, but the species doesn’t die out. That’s what stumps me about the desert. Take the human creatures. They grow fiercer than animals. Maybe that’s because nature did not intend man to live on the desert. An’ it is no place for man. Nature intended these classes of plants an’ these species of birds an’ beasts to live, fight, thrive, an’ reproduce their kind on the desert. But men can’t thrive nor reproduce their kind here.” “How about the Indians who lived in the desert for hundreds of years?” asked Adam.