. Listen! You have not long to live, Otto. And all that you
have lived for will be dust and ashes. All the work that you have done
will be cast to the four winds of Heaven, while this man," pointing to
Roger, "will found your empire for you. You have planted in intrigue and
you will die in shame. Otto, let me go through the strong box."

"Clarissa," exclaimed Von Minden, with for the first time a note of pity
in his voice, "you've gone crazy."

His wife smiled sardonically. "I'm going to see what is in the strong
box, if I follow you to China," and with this she turned on her heel and
disappeared into her tent. Nor did she come out again that night.

"Now, Mr. von Minden," said Roger sternly. "I tell you quite frankly,
that you're not welcome here. If Miss Preble hadn't interceded for you,
I'd hand you over to the authorities."

Crazy Dutch nodded affably. "You're quite right. I deserve it. But I've
had a touch of the sun and for a moment I was out of my head. In this
lonely country we must bear with each other."

"The way you bear with your wife, I suppose," suggested Ernest.

Von Minden looked half apprehensively over his shoulder at his wife's
tent, then he said in a confidential whisper, "Now _she_ is crazy and
has been for years. Only she's crazy all the time so the only thing to
do is to keep away from her. She was a very good, hard working woman,
once."

"So I should judge from what she tells us," Roger's voice was grim. "It
strikes us that you treated her as if she were a horse and not a woman.
But that's not our business. Why did you come back here, Von Minden?"

"I came to apologize."

"Well, I accept the apology. Now you had better go on about your
business and I'll get your wife back to Phoenix, some way."

Von Minden drew himself up. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Moore, I'm not in
the habit of being spoken to in this manner. Apologize at once!"

Roger turned red. "Why you infernal little shrimp--" he began.

But Ernest interrupted. "Keep your temper, Rog. All this isn't worth
seeing red for."

"Of course it isn't," said the little German briskly. "Now I'm planning
to spend the evening with the Prebles and then I'll go on into the
range. Peter, my dear, I'll give you a drink now. We were out in all
this storm, gentlemen, but we don't mind them, Peter and I. There is a
beauty about them, these passions of the desert. How are the Prebles?"

The two men started. "We were going up there," said Ernest. "