“Wansfell, no man can ever tell. It’s folly to think an’ toil an’ hope for the future.”
What strong, sad history of life revealed itself in that reply!
“Ah!... I— But never mind what I think. Dismukes, you’ve not been on the desert long.”
“About a week. Outfitted at San Diego an’ came over the mountain trail through El Campo. Landed in Frisco two weeks an’ more ago. By ship from Japan.”
“Did you have these old clothes hid away somewhere?” inquired Adam. “I remember them.”
“No. I packed them wherever I went for the whole three years.”
“Three years! Has it been that long?”
“Aye, friend Wansfell, three years.”
Adam gazed out across the desert with slowly dimming eyes. The wasteland stretched there, vast and illimitable, the same as all the innumerable times he had gazed. Solemn and gray and old, indifferent to man, yet strengthening through its passionless fidelity to its own task!
“Dismukes, I want you to tell me where you went, what you did, why you came back,” said Adam, with earnestness that was entreaty.