e desert unfold before his car window a few days later as his
train made its way southward from the main line and into the Bad Lands
of the Nevada gold-fields. There was snow everywhere; not enough for
warmth, but enough to chill the landscape with a gray, forbidding
aspect. It lay, loose-piled and shifting, behind naked rocks, or
streamed over the knife-edge ridges, swirling and settling in the
gullies like filmy winding-sheets. All the world up here was barren,
burned out, and cold, like his own life; it was a fitting place in which
to end an existence which had proven such a mockery and failure.

Goldfield was a conglomerate city in the hectic stage of its growth.
Rough, uncouth, primitive, it lay cradled in the lap of inhospitable
hills upon the denuded slopes of which derricks towered like gallows.
The whole naked country spoke of death and desolation.

A bitter wind laden with driving particles of sleet met the travelers as
they stepped off the train.

DeVoe's headquarters consisted of a typical mining-camp shack in the
heart of the town, containing a bare little office and two
sleeping-rooms, the hindermost of which gave egress to a yard banked in
snow and flanked by other frame buildings.

Murray selected the coldest apartment and unpacked his belongings, the
most precious of which was a folding morocco case containing three
photographs--one of Muriel and one each of the boy and the girl.

Then followed a week of careful preparation. Together the two men made
frequent excursions to various mining properties. Murray mingled with
the heterogeneous crowd of brokers, promoters, gamblers, and
mine-owners; he took options on claims and made elaborate plans to
develop them; he was interviewed by reporters from the local papers;
articles were printed telling of his proposed activities. When he had
laid a secure foundation, he announced to DeVoe that the time had come.

It appeared that the latter had by no means exaggerated the dangers of
this climate, for men were really dying in such numbers as to create
almost a panic, the hospitals were overcrowded, and Murray had been
repeatedly warned to take the strictest care of himself if he wished to
preserve his health. The altitude combined with the cold and wet and the
lack of accommodations was to blame, it seemed, and accounted for the
high mortality rate. Doctors assured him that once a man was stricken
with pneumonia in this climate there was little chance of savin