"At Black P'int!" whooped Dusty Rhodes doubling up in a knot to squeeze out the last atom of his mirth, "w'y I've been past that p'int for twenty years--it's nothing but porphyry and burnt lava! He's crazy with the heat! Where's your father, my little girl? We'll have to go out and ketch him if we ever expect to git back that mule!" "He's working up the canyon," answered Billy sulkily, "but never you mind about my mule. He's mine, I guess, and I loaned him to that man in exchange for a half interest in his mine!" "Oh, it's a _mine_ now, is it?" mocked Dusty Rhodes, "next thing it'll be a mine and mill. And he borrowed your mule, eh, that your father give ye, and sent ye back home on foot!" "I don't care!" pouted Billy, "I'll bet you change your tune when you see him coming back with my mule. You went off and left him, and if I hadn't gone down and helped him he would have died in the desert of thirst." "Eh--eh! Went off and _left_ him!" bleated Dusty in a fury, "the poor fool went off and left _me_! I picked him up at Furnace Crick, over in the middle of Death Valley, and jest took him along out of pity; and all the way over he was looking at every rock when a prospector wouldn't spit on the place! He was eating my grub and packing his bed on my jacks; and then, by the gods, he wants me to stop at Black P'int while he looks at that hungry bull-quartz! I warned him distinctly that I don't wait for no man--did he say I went off and left him?" "Yes, he did," answered Billy, "and he says he's going to kill you, because you went off and took all his water!" "Hoo, hoo!" jeered Dusty Rhodes, "that big bag of wind?" But he ignored what she said about the water. They spattered through the creek, where it flowed out to sink in the sand, and passed around the point of the canyon; and then the green valley spread out before them until it was cut off by the gorge above. This was the treacherous Corkscrew Bend, where the fury of countless cloudbursts had polished the granite walls like a tombstone; but Dusty Rhodes recalled the time when a fine stage-road had threaded its curves and led on up the canyon to old Panamint. But the flood which had destroyed the road had left the town marooned and the inhabitants had gone out over the rocks; until now only Cole Campbell, the owner of the Homestake, stayed on to do the work on his claims. In this valley far below he had made his home for years, diverting the creek to water his scanty crops; while in season and out he labored on the road which was to connect up his mine with the world.