‘By composin’ yourself to listen a little longer. First you see two big pines less’n twenty feet apart, still alive, but showing marks of a forest fire ten or twelve years back.’
‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how a tree would look, twelve years after a forest fire—’
‘Right, you wouldn’t, but that ain’t all to go by. It is a Flats, remember, and on the Flats is a lot of big white stones, and printed on the biggest of ’em in black letters, “Are You Doomed?”’
Elbert saw himself getting there.
‘... humorist—now I wonder?’ Mr. Leadley went on. ‘Or just a pious gent coming up into Nineveh, as if sent for? “Are You Doomed?”—he paints, right on the big stone facin’ the trail, and a little ways off on a smaller stone, he fixes the answer: “Jesus Saves.” That there handwritin’ on the rock seems to be for me, ’cause every time I go for water—there it is. But as I was sayin’, you’ll know you’re comin’ to the Flats when you get to the last water.’
‘How shall I know it’s the last water?’
‘’Cause pretty soon after that you’ll come to the Flats. Anyway, I’d be watchin’ on the day set—’
Elbert was finally able to arrange a few days off, without losing his job outright, though he felt queerly uncertain about coming back, the claim being beyond Yuma on his way East. On a morning in late March, he reached San Forenso, where he was met by Mr. Cotton, with a two-horse rig. The hand that Elbert gripped was crippled in shape, but did not lack strength, and the eyes of Mr. Leadley’s old partner peered into his with such frequency and deep intent from under their bushy white brows, that Elbert began to feel he had never before been so exhaustively appraised.
‘Has Bob started in tellin’ you about Red Ante, yet?’ Mr. Cotton asked after they had driven some time.
‘No,’ said Elbert, wondering if Red Ante were a game.