“Sure. But I’ll settle down sometime, I suppose,” replied Dismukes, reflectively.
“Friend, will you marry?” inquired Adam, gravely. How intensely interesting was this man about to go out into the world!
“Marry!—What?” ejaculated the prospector.
“A woman, of course.”
“My God!” rolled out Dismukes. The thought had startled him. His great ox eyes reflected changes of amazing thought, shadows of old emotions long submerged. “That’s somethin’ I never did think of. Me marry a woman!... No woman would ever have me.”
“Dismukes, you’re not so old. And you’ll be rich. When you wear off the desert roughness you can find a wife. The world is full of good women who need husbands.”
“Wansfell, you ain’t serious?” queried Dismukes, puzzled and stirred. He ran a broad hand through his shock of grizzled hair. His eyes were beautiful then. “I never had wife or sweetheart.... No girl ever looked at me—when I was a boy. An’ these years on the desert, women have been scarce, an’ not one was ever anythin’ to me.”
“Well, when you get among a lot of pretty girls, just squeeze one for me,” said Adam, with the smile that was sad.
Plain it was how Adam’s attempt at pleasantry, despite its undercurrent, had opened up a vista of bewildering and entrancing prospects for Dismukes. This prospector had grown grizzled on the desert; his long years had been years of loneliness; and now the forgotten dreams and desires of youth thronged thick and sweet in his imagination. Adam left him to that engrossing fancy, hoping it would keep him content and silent for a while.
A golden flare brightened over the Panamint range, silhouetting the long, tapering lines of the peaks. Far to the west, when the sun had set, floated gray and silver-edged clouds, and under them a whorl of rosy, dusky, ruddy haze. All the slopes below were beginning to be enshrouded in purple, and even while Adam watched they grew cold and dark. The heat veils were still rising, but they were from the ridges of dark-brown and pale-gray earth far this side of the mountains. Death Valley was hidden, and for that Adam was glad. The winds had ceased, the clouds of dust had long settled. It was a bold and desolate scene, of wide scope and tremendous dimensions, a big country. The afterglow of sunset transformed the clouds. Then the golden flare faded fast, the clouds paled, the purple gloom deepened. Vast black ridges of mountains stood out like ragged islands in a desolate sea.