Adam shook his head. “I’m no farther than you, Dismukes, though I think differently about life and death.... I’ve fought to live on this wasteland, but I’ve fought hardest to think. It seems that always nature strikes me with its terrible mace! I have endless hours to look at the desert and I see what you see—the strange ferocity of it all—the fierce purpose. No wonder you say the desert stamps a man!”
“Aye! An’ woman, too! Take this she-devil who runs a place here in Tecopah—Mohave Jo is the name she bears. Have you seen her?”
“No, but I’ve heard of her. At Needles I met the wife of a miner, Clark, who’d been killed here at Tecopah.”
“Never heard of Clark. But I don’t doubt the story. It’s common enough—miners bein’ killed an’ robbed. There’s a gang over in the Panamints who live on miners.”
“I’m curious to see Mohave Jo,” said Adam.
“Well, speakin’ of this one-eyed harridan reminds me of a man I met last trip across the Salton flats, down on the Colorado. Met him at Walters—a post on the stage line. He had only one eye, too. There was a terrible scar where his eye, the right one, had been. He was one of these Texans lookin’ for a man. There seems to be possibilities of a railroad openin’ up that part of the desert. An’ this fellow quizzed me about water holes. Of course, if any one gets hold of water in that country he’ll strike it rich as gold, if the country ever opens up. It’s likely to happen, too. Well, this man had an awful face. He’d been a sheriff in Texas, some one said, an’ later at Ehrenberg. Hell on hangin’ men!... Of course I never asked him how he lost his eye. But he told me—spoke of it more than once. The deformity had affected his mind. You meet men like that—sort of crazy on somethin’. He was always lookin’ for the fellow who’d knocked out his eye. To kill him!”
“Do you—recall his—name?” asked Adam, his voice halting with a thick sensation in his throat. The past seemed as yesterday.
“Never was much on rememberin’ names,” responded Dismukes, scratching his shaggy head. “Let’s see—why, yes, he called himself Collis—Collis—haw. That’s it—Collishaw. Hard name to remember. But as a man he struck me easy to remember.... Well, friend Wansfell, I’ve had enough talkin’ to do me for a spell. I’m goin’ to bed.”
While Adam sat beside the fire, motionless, pondering with slow, painful amaze over what he had just heard, Dismukes prepared for his night’s rest. He unrolled a pack, spread a ragged old canvas, folded a blanket upon it, and arranged another blanket to pull up over him, together with the end of the canvas. For a pillow he utilized an old coat that lay on his pack. His sole concession to man’s custom of undressing for bed was the removal of his old slouch hat. Then with slow, labored movement he lay down to stretch his huge body and pull the coverlets over him. From his cavernous breast heaved a long, deep sigh. His big eyes, dark and staring, gazed up at the brightening stars, and then they closed.
Adam felt tempted to pack and move on to a quiet and lonely place off in the desert, where he could think without annoyance. Keen and bitterly faithful as had been his memory, it had long ceased to revive thoughts of Collishaw, the relentless sheriff and ally of Guerd. How strange and poignant had been the shock of recollection! It had been the blow Adam had dealt—the savage fling of his gun in Collishaw’s face—that had destroyed an eye and caused a hideous disfigurement. And the Texan, with that fatality characteristic of his kind, was ever on the lookout for the man who had ruined his eyesight. Perhaps that was only one reason for his thirst for revenge. Guerd! Had Collishaw not sworn to hang Adam? “You’ll swing for this!” he had yelled in his cold, ringing voice of passion. And so Adam lived over again the old agony, new and strange in its bitter mockery, its vain hope of forgetfulness. Vast as the desert was, it seemed small now to Adam, for there wandered over it a relentless and bloodthirsty Texan, hunting to kill him. The past was not dead. The present and the future could not be wholly consecrated to atonement. A specter, weird and grotesque as a yucca tree, loomed out there in the shadows of the desert night. Death stalked on Adam’s trail. The hatred of men was beyond power to understand. Work, fame, use, health, love, home, life itself, could be sacrificed by some men just to kill a rival or an enemy. Adam remembered that Collishaw had hated him and loved Guerd. Moreover, Collishaw had that strange instinct to kill men—a passion which grew by what it fed on—a morbid mental twist that drove him to rid himself of the terrible haunting ghost of his last victim by killing a new one. Added to that was a certain leaning toward the notorious.