omach that. You see you just peg the boards up in the
sand, a foot apart and pack them full of the adobe. That'll be the
thickness of the house. Then when the strips are dried, we'll cut them
the length we want. Two days more work will give us all we need."

"Vat a country!" exclaimed Gustav.

Ernest and Roger laughed. "I take it Dick is O. K. again," said Roger.

"Quite himself. Said Charley was used up, but she came down late this
afternoon with Felicia and she said she was feeling fine. Felicia made
those little bricks yonder. Charley has put her into overalls. She's
simply ravishing in them."

"And how is your guest?" asked Roger. "I've been telling Schmidt about
her. He's heard of Von Minden at Archer's. And it seems she outfitted
there. Claimed to have come up from Phoenix and said she had an
engagement with us."

"Well, she was invisible, practically until noon to-day. Then she
brought her rocking chair here where Dick and I were at work and
concentrated on us all the afternoon."

"Concentrated? Vat iss concentrated?" asked Gustav.

"Well, she rocks in the chair, holding the pink umbrella till Dick
lashed it to the chair back for her. She keeps her eyes closed and
doesn't speak, though she did explain that she was talking to her
mother, who is on the seventh plane, concerning the successful erection
of the engine house. Dick seems quite smitten by her. He gazes on her
and gazes as if fascinated, then he goes off behind the living tent and
laughs."

"My God, what a country!" groaned Roger.

"I've got a bed fixed up for you in the cook tent, Schmidt," said
Ernest. "You'll be safe if none of Mrs. von Minden's spirit friends
bother you. She told me that she heard them playing the accordion in the
cook tent last night."

"I love music," was Schmidt's response, and the three men went laughing
to bed. Roger wakened in the night but once. Through the open tent flap
he beheld Mrs. von Minden rocking silently in the starlight before her
tent.

"She's going to get on my nerves," he murmured and fell asleep again.

Dawn was just breaking over the mountains the next morning when Roger
entered the cook tent. He was greeted by Gustav, who was purple with the
cold but grinning cheerfully, and the smell of coffee.

"It vas not so soft, sleeping on Frau Nature's heart in the desert,
nicht wahr!" he exclaimed. "Coyotes vere eating the garbage last night
mit gulps and snortings and I slept not. It vas not the music I