````But brighter were her eyes.=
```Then carry me back to Tennessee,
````There let me——=
It was a melody of his childhood. His mother had sung it to him in the old lost days of his youth and innocence, and the plaintive ballad came cracked and quavering through lips swollen with suffering. It was a mournful song, but it seemed appropriate, for The Wounded Bad Man was thinking of the little mother away off there in the silence at Terrapin Tanks. Whether from this or physical inability to proceed farther, his voice broke in the second line of the chorus.
“Dog my cats,” he gasped feebly, “I can't sing a lick no more!”
“I'll sing for him,” volunteered The Youngest Bad Man; “I'l give him 'The Yeller Rose o' Texas'.”
They made fifteen miles that first night, and at sun-up they emerged from the black volcanic hills out on to a great, white, shimmering, dry salt lake. A mile away a little cabin, dazzling white in the glint of the rising sun, flared against the horizon, and far to the northeast the Witch of Old Woman Mountain sat watching them.
“Over there on the southeast spur of Old Woman you'll find New Jerusalem, Bob,” The Worst Bad Man explained. “That mountain with the rocky crest that looks like a witch in profile—that's Old Woman Mountain. Watch the Witch, Bob, an' you'll get there.”
The Youngest Bad Man nodded. “We can't carry the baby in this heat,” he reminded them. “Hand him over, Bill, and I'll just buck-jump along to that little cabin an' hole up with him till you an' Tom catch up.”
“I'll carry him,” The Wounded Bad Man retorted doggedly.