“Stay. Oella is not afraid. We will hide in the canyons,” she said.
“No. I have sinned. I have blood on my hands. But, Oella, I am not dishonorable. I will not cheat you.”
“Take me,” she cried, and the soft, deep-toned, passionate voice shook Adam’s heart. She would share his wanderings.
“Good-by, Oella,” he said, huskily. And he strode forth to drive his burro out into the lonely, melancholy desert night.
CHAPTER XII
The second meeting between Adam and the prospector Dismukes occurred at Tecopah, a mining camp in the Mohave Desert.
The mining camp lay in a picturesque valley where green and gray growths marked the course of the gravel-lined creek, and sandy benches spread out to dark, rocky slopes, like lava, that heaved away in the bleak ranges.
It was in March, the most colorful season in the Mohave, that Adam arrived at Tecopah to halt on a grassy bench at the outskirts of the camp. A little spring welled up here and trickled down to the creek. It was drinking water celebrated among desert men, who had been known to go out of their way to drink there. The telltale ears of Adam’s burros advised him of the approach of some one, and he looked up from his camp tasks to find a familiar figure approaching him. He rubbed his eyes. Was that strange figure the same as the one so vividly limned on his memory? Squat, huge, grotesque, the man coming toward him was Dismukes! His motley, patched garb, his old slouch hat, his boots yellow with clay and alkali, appeared the same he had worn on the memorable day Adam’s eyes had unclosed to see them.
Dismukes drove his burros up to the edge of the bench, evidently having in mind the camp site Adam occupied. When he espied Adam he hesitated and, gruffly calling to the burros, he turned away.