“Who’s that sun lizard? Kin you make him out?” he asked the driver.
The latter looked. “Sure. That’s old Tinnemaha Pete, a prospector. You must know him. Hangs around Mrs. Liggs’ store a lot. She’s bin grubstaking him for years, I hear. Some one was telling me he used to be her husband’s partner.”
Lemuel nodded. “Come to think of it now, I did meet him there wunst.”
“Poor old devil! If it weren’t for her he’d have starved to death long ago,” said the driver. “The gold fever sure gets ’em, don’t it? He’s been going it all his life and never found anything. Never will, I reckon. One of these days, he’ll go out and the old desert’ll pick his bones clean. That’s how most of these granddads end up.”
The machine sped on, its dust cloud trailing across the flat, enveloping the bent, shriveled form of Tinnemaha Pete, rocking pathetically along on his unsteady legs, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, bound for Geerusalem. Like some misshapen wraith, born of the grotesqueness and deformity of that wild, mystic desolation, he fled on, his long gray beard whisking about in the hot breeze, his baggy clothes bulging and shrinking in the wrench and flip of its frolicking.
A few minutes later the automobile stopped before the Huntington gate, and Lemuel sprang out and hurried up the walk toward the house. Dot, attracted by the approach of the car, had come to the front door. She greeted her father with an expression of blank amazement.
“What in the world, daddy——” she began.
“Git ready to travel, hon!” he cried out excitedly, as he put an arm around her and drew her into the house. “Looket! Looket! We got money. What d’you think o’ that?” He fished out a handful of bills and waved them before her face. He broke into a gleeful laugh, so well assumed that it deceived her. “What’d I tell you, eh? Bob Warburton come through like a leetle major. Loaned me two thousand dollars on my note. Think o’ that! Ain’t that jest dandy? Come on, now! Chuck some duds in a valise. We’re startin’ right out on a big blow-out. We’re goin’ to see the world—me an’ you.” He romped around the room with her, like an overjoyed schoolboy.
“But, daddy,” she protested in bewilderment, “how can I? Why, you don’t give me time to——”
“You don’t need nothin’. I’m goin’ to tog you out complete with a hull bran’-new outfit, soon’s we hit the city. Hurry up! We ain’t got all day to talk about it, Dot. We’re strikin’ south to Mirage. I’m on’y takin’ a shirt an’ a pair o’ socks, myself.” He headed for his room.