idn't lend him your _mule_! Well, I'm
afraid, my little girl, you've made a mistake--that feller is a regular
horse-thief. Is your mother up to the house? We'll go up and see
her--I'm afraid he's gone and stole your mule!"

"Oh, no he hasn't," protested Billy confidently, running along the trail
beside him, "he went back to stake out his claim. He found some rich ore
right there at Black Point, and he's going to give me half of it."

"At Black P'int!" whooped Dusty Rhodes doubling up in a knot to squeeze
out the last atom of his mirth, "w'y I've been past that p'int for
twenty years--it's nothing but porphyry and burnt lava! He's crazy with
the heat! Where's your father, my little girl? We'll have to go out and
ketch him if we ever expect to git back that mule!"

"He's working up the canyon," answered Billy sulkily, "but never you
mind about my mule. He's mine, I guess, and I loaned him to that man in
exchange for a half interest in his mine!"

"Oh, it's a _mine_ now, is it?" mocked Dusty Rhodes, "next thing
it'll be a mine and mill. And he borrowed your mule, eh, that your
father give ye, and sent ye back home on foot!"

"I don't care!" pouted Billy, "I'll bet you change your tune when you
see him coming back with my mule. You went off and left him, and if I
hadn't gone down and helped him he would have died in the desert of
thirst."

"Eh--eh! Went off and _left_ him!" bleated Dusty in a fury, "the
poor fool went off and left _me_! I picked him up at Furnace Crick,
over in the middle of Death Valley, and jest took him along out of pity;
and all the way over he was looking at every rock when a prospector
wouldn't spit on the place! He was eating my grub and packing his bed on
my jacks; and then, by the gods, he wants me to stop at Black P'int
while he looks at that hungry bull-quartz! I warned him distinctly that
I don't wait for no man--did he say I went off and left him?"

"Yes, he did," answered Billy, "and he says he's going to kill you,
because you went off and took all his water!"

"Hoo, hoo!" jeered Dusty Rhodes, "that big bag of wind?" But he ignored
what she said about the water.

They spattered through the creek, where it flowed out to sink in the
sand, and passed around the point of the canyon; and then the green
valley spread out before them until it was cut off by the gorge above.
This was the treacherous Corkscrew Bend, where the fury of countless
cloudbursts had polished the granite walls like a