“Why, for Lord’s sake?” Dismukes at last exploded, his great ox eyes rolling. “It’s gold. Most of it I mined before those devils came. It’s clean an’ honest. You deserve a share. An’ the half of it will more than make up the sum I’ve slaved an’ saved to get. Why, man—why won’t you take it?”
“Well, friend, I guess the only reason I’ve got is that it’s too heavy to pack,” replied Adam. He smiled as he spoke, but the fact was he had no other reason for refusal.
Dismukes stared with wide eyes and open mouth. Adam, apparently, was beyond his comprehension just the same as Dismukes was beyond Adam’s. Finally he swore his astonishment, grunted his disapproval, and then, resigning himself to Adam’s strange apathy, he straightway glowed again.
Adam, despite his amusement and something of sadness, could not help but respond in a measure to the intense rapture of his friend. Dismukes’ great work had ended. His long quest for the Golden Fleece had been rewarded. His thirty-five years of wandering and enduring and toiling were over, and life had suddenly loomed beautiful and enchanting. The dream of boyhood had come true. The fortune had been made. And now to look forward to ease, rest, travel, joy—all that he had slaved for. Marvelous past—magnificent prospect of future!
Adam listened kindly, and went slowly, with tired limbs, about the camp tasks; and now he gazed at Dismukes, and again had an eye for his surroundings. Often he gazed up at the exceedingly high, blunt break in the Funeral range. What cataclysm of nature had made that rent? It was a zigzagged saw-toothed wall, with strata slanted at an angle of forty-five degrees. Zigzag veins of black and red bronze ran through the vast drab mass.
The long purple shadows that Adam loved had begun to fall. Several huge bats with white heads darted in irregular flight over the camp. Adam’s hands, and his jaw, too, were swollen and painful as a result of the fight, and he served himself and ate with difficulty. And as for speech, he had little chance for that. Dismukes’ words flowed like a desert flood. The man was bewitched. He would consume moments in eloquent description of what he was going to do, then suddenly switch to an irrelevant subject.
“Once, years ago, I was lost on the desert,” he said, reminiscently. “First an’ only time I ever got lost for sure. Got out of grub. Began to starve. Was goin’ to kill an’ eat my burro, when he up an’ run off. Finally got out of water. That’s the last straw, you know.... I walked all day an’ all night an’ all day, only to find myself more lost than ever. I thought I had been travelin’ toward the west to some place I’d heard of water an’ a ranch. Then I made sure I’d gone the wrong way. Staggerin’ an’ fallin’ an’ crawlin’ till near daylight, at last I gave up an’ stretched out to die. Me! I gave up—was glad to die.... I can remember the look of the pale stars—the gray mornin’ light—the awful silence an’ loneliness. Yes, I wanted to die quick.... An’ all at once I heard a rooster crow!”
“Well! You’d lain down to die near a ranch. That was funny,” declared Adam. Life did play queer pranks on men.
“Funny! Say, pard Wansfell, there’s nothin’ funny about death. An’ as for life, I never dreamed how glorious it is, until I heard that rooster crow. I’ll buy a farm of green an’ grassy an’ shady land somewhere in the East—land with runnin’ water everywhere—an’ I’ll raise a thousand roosters just to hear them crow.”
“Thought you meant to travel,” said Adam.