“Yes, I’ve buried the remains of more than one poor devil,” replied Adam.
“Is it best to bury them? I let them lay as warnin’ to other poor devils. No one but a crazy man would drink at a water hole where there was a skeleton.... Well, to come back to your goin’ to Death Valley. I’d go in by the Amargosa. It’s a windin’ stream an’ long, but safe. An’ there’s firewood an’ a little grass. Now when you get across the valley you’ll run into prospectors an’ miners an’ wanderers at the water holes. An’ like as not you’ll meet some of the claim jumpers an’ robbers that live in the Panamints. From what I hear about you, Wansfell, I reckon a meetin’ with them would be a bad hour for them, an’ somethin’ of good fortune to honest miners. Hey?”
“Dismukes, I don’t run from men of that stripe,” replied Adam, grimly.
“Ahuh! I reckon not,” said Dismukes, just as grimly. “Well, last time I was over there—let’s see, it was in September, hotter ’n hell, an’ I run across two queer people up in a canyon I’d never prospected before. Didn’t see any sign of any other prospectors ever bein’ in there.... Two queer people—a man an’ a woman livin’ in a shack they’d built right under the damnedest roughest slope of weathered rock you ever saw in your life. Why, it was a plain case of suicide, an’ so I tried to show them! Every hour you could hear the crack of a rollin’ bowlder or the graty slip of an avalanche, gettin’ oneasy an’ wantin’ to slide. But the woman was deathly afraid of her husband an’ he was a skunk an’ a wolf rolled into a man, if I ever saw one. I couldn’t do anythin’ for the poor woman, an’ I couldn’t learn any more than I’m tellin’ you. That’s not much. But, Wansfell, she wasn’t a common sort. She’d been beautiful once. She had the saddest face I ever saw. I got two feelin’s, one that she wasn’t long for this earth, an’ the other that the man hated her with a terrible hate.... I meet with queer people an’ queer situations as I wander over this desert, but here’s the beat of all my experience. An’, Wansfell, I’d like to have you go see that couple. I reckon they’ll be there, if alive yet. He chose a hidden spot, an’ he has Shoshone Indians pack his supplies in from the ranches way on the other side of the Panamints. A queer deal, horrible for that poor woman, an’ I’ve been haunted by her face ever since. I’d like you to go there.”
“I’ll go. But why do you say that, Dismukes?” asked Adam, curiously.
“Well—you ought to know what your name means to desert men,” replied Dismukes, constrainedly, and he looked down at the camp fire, to push forward a piece of half-burnt wood.
“No, I never heard,” said Adam. “I’ve lived ’most always alone. Of course I’ve had to go to freighting posts and camps. I’ve worked in gold diggings. I’ve guided wagon trains across the Mohave. Naturally, I’ve been among men. But I never heard that my name meant anything.”
“Wansfell! I remember now that you called yourself Wansfell. I’ve heard that name. Some of your doings, Wansfell, have made camp-fire stories. See here, Wansfell, you won’t take offense at me.”
“No offense, friend Dismukes,” replied Adam, strangely affected. Here was news that forced him to think of himself as a man somehow related to and responsible to his kind. He had gone to and fro over the trails of the desert, and many adventures had befallen him. He had lived them, with the force the desert seemed to have taught him, and then had gone his way down the lonely trails, absorbed in his secret. The years seemed less than the blowing sand. He had been an unfortunate boy burdened with a crime; he was now a matured man, still young in years, but old with the silence and loneliness and strife of the desert, gray at the temples, with that old burden still haunting him. How good to learn that strange men spoke his name with wonder and respect! He had helped wanderers as Dismukes had helped him; he had meted out desert violence to evil men who crossed his trail; he had, doubtless, done many little unremembered deeds of kindness in a barren world where little deeds might be truly overappreciated; but the name Wansfell meant nothing to him, the reputation hinted by Dismukes amazed him, strangely thrilled him; the implication of nobility filled him with sadness and remorse. What had he done with the talents given him?
“Wansfell, you see—you’re somethin’ of the man I might have been,” said Dismukes, hesitatingly.