“Look here, Sagebrush. Remember that young woman at the hotel? They’ve framed up a deal on her. They’re trying to sell her a chicken-ranch on this mesa.”
“Sounds like them city fellers. Dad blame, they’d rob a dyin’ man! Serves the female right, too, for havin’ that much money. Females aint got no right to have money. Oncet when I was married and livin’ down to Umatilla, my ol’ woman got ten dollars from one of her relations and went to Phoenix, and durned if she didn’t spend it all in three days. When I trounced her for it, she up and run off with a Mormon from Yuma, and that’s the last of her. Twenty years ago that was, and I been happy ever since, and ain’t looked twice at no females.”
“That’s a novel argument, certainly,” said Tompkins. “But I’m going to try and keep Miss Gilman from getting robbed. Are you with me?”
Sagebrush rubbed his whiskers, squinted at the sand, expectorated over an unwary Chuckwalla lizard, and then responded without enthusiasm.
“Nope! Quicker that there female gits skun and gits out o’ this country, better off I’ll be. I don’t hanker after no females spoilin’ the scenery. Besides which, I aint pinin’ to start no argument with Sidewinder Crowfoot and his crowd, not without they force me into it. Leave the other feller alone, I says, so long’s he don’t crowd ye none.”
“All right, then,” said Tompkins briskly, and turned to the car. “Let’s get moving.”
They drove on in renewed silence. Tompkins had a new angle on his companion, and was not sure that he liked it; at all events, he perceived that Sagebrush knew his own mind and was not to be depended upon as an assistant under the present completion of things. The desert rat had a certain peculiar philosophy of his own, like all old prospectors, and arguments against it would be as useless as the teeth of a coyote against the shell of a tortoise. So Tompkins held his peace.
The flat desert gave way to hills and depressions as they drew closer to the range, and by the action of the engine Tompkins knew that they had been on a steady climb. Also, he began to sight scattered piñon trees, indicating a higher altitude, and was conscious that they were following an ancient road. Presently the car was climbing along a well defined valley, which Sagebrush called Mint Cañon.
“Ol’ stamp-mill ahead of us,” he announced. “Fellers used to bring quartz down to it from all around, in the ol’ days. Got to leave the car there. Job Carter put up that there mill; four-stamp crusher, she was—dad blame, how Job did like his licker! Used to make mint juleps in a bucket. That’s how come he growed mint. Job, he used to whiff the mint and then throw down the licker while he held his breath. One night he wakes up with a pain in his stummick and mixes him a julep in the dark, and got him the cyanide bottle by mistake, and he’s buried somewhere back o’ the mill right now. That’s what comes o’ not stoppin’ to appreciate your licker as it goes down.”
They rounded a low hill and halted by the remains of the stamp-mill—a structure of weather-beaten boards, open in front, with the remains of a shed adjoining. The machinery was rusted and strewn about the place haphazard, and the whole place was the epitome of desolation. To one side was a board floor—the only relic of what had once been a roadside saloon, adjoining the mill.