Overland Red | Page 3

He had wandered into it, panned a little
black sand, and found color. Finally he discovered the fountainhead of
the hoarded yellow particles that spell Power. There in the fastness of
those steep, purgatorial walls was the hermitage of the two
voices--voices that no longer whispered of hope, but left him in the
utter loneliness of possession and its birthright, Fear.
He cried aloud for the companionship of men--and glanced fearfully
round lest man had heard him call.
He again journeyed to the town beside the railroad, bought supplies and
vanished, a ragged wraith, on the horizon.
Back in the cañon he set about his labors, finding a numbing solace in
toil.
But at night he would think of the child's face. He had said to those
with whom he had left the child that he would return with a fortune.
They knew he went away to forget. They did not expect him to return.
That had been ten years ago. He had written twice. Then he had drifted,
always promising the inner voice that urged him that he would find
gold for her, his child, that she might ever think kindly of him. So he
tried to buy himself--with promises. Once he had been a man of his

hands, a man who stood straight and faced the sun. Now the people of
the desert town eyed him askance. He heard them say he was mad--that
the desert had "got him." They were wrong. The desert and its secret
was his--a sullen paramour, but his nevertheless. Had she not given him
of her very heart?
He viewed his shrunken body, knew that he stooped and shuffled,
realized that he had paid the inevitable, the inexorable price for the
secret. His wine of dreams had evaporated.... He sifted the coarse gold
between his fingers, letting it fall back into the pan. Was it for this that
he had wasted his soul?
* * * * *
In the desert town men began to notice the regularity of his comings
and goings. Two or three of them foregathered in the saloon and
commented on it.
"He packed some dynamite last trip," asserted one.
There was a silence. The round clock behind the bar ticked loudly,
ominously.
"Then he's struck it at last," said another.
"Mebby," commented the first speaker.
The third man nodded. Then came silence again and the absolute
ticking of the clock. Presently from outside in the white heat of the road
came the rush of hoofs and an abrupt stop. A spurred and booted rider,
his swarthy face gray with dust, strode in, nodded to the group and
called for whiskey.
"Which way did he go, Saunders?" asked one.
"North, as usual," said the rider.
"Let's set down," suggested the third man.

They shuffled to a table. The bartender brought glasses and a bottle.
Then, uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat with them. The rider
looked at him pointedly.
"Oh, I'm in on this," asserted the bartender. "Daugherty is the
Wells-Fargo man here. He won't talk to nobody but me--about
business."
"What's that got to do with it?" queried the rider.
"Just what you'd notice, Saunders. Listen! The rat left a bag of dust in
the Company's safe last trip. Daugherty says its worth mebby five
hundred. He says the rat's goin' to bring in some more. Do I come in?"
"You're on," said the rider. "Now, see here, boys, we got to find out if
he's filed on it yet, and what his name is, and then--"
"Mebby we'd better find out where it is first," suggested one.
"And then jump him?" queried the rider over his glass.
"And then jump him," chorused the group. "He's out there alone. It's
easy." And each poured himself a drink, for which, strangely enough,
no one offered to pay, and for which the bartender evidently forgot to
collect.
Meanwhile the prospector toiled through the drought of that summer
hoarding the little yellow flakes that he washed from the gravel in the
cañon.
CHAPTER II
WATER
All round him for miles each way the water-holes had gone dry. The
little cañon stream still wound down its shaded course, disappearing in
a patch of sand at the cañon's mouth, so the prospector felt secure.
None had ridden out to look for him through that furnace of burning

sand that stretched between the hills and the desert town.
The stream dwindled slowly, imperceptibly.
One morning the prospector noticed it, and immediately explored the
creek clear to its source--a spurt of water springing from the roof of a
grotto in the cliff. Such a supply, evidently from the rocky heart of the
range itself, would be inexhaustible.
A week later he awoke to find the creek-bed dry save in a few
depressions among the rocks. He