least two hundred dollars. But you know how those
things go."

"We'll have to save every cent of that for grub," mused Roger. "Dick
told me that over on Snake Peak there is a mine that closed down four
years ago and that their engine was an oil burner. He says there hasn't
been a watchman there for a year. There's a chance that they have left
some oil."

"How'll you pay for it?" asked Ernest.

"Pay for it!" grunted Roger. "Wait till I find it, will you? You and
Gustav clean up after the storm to-morrow and go on with the absorber.
I'll take a tramp up to Snake Peak."

He was on his way before sun-up, the next morning, a canteen of water
over his shoulder and a lunch in his pocket. He moved as rapidly as the
heavy walking permitted, driven by a sense of impatience to which he
gave no name. But subconsciously he realized that forever behind that
beauty of the desert to which, like Von Minden, he felt he might gladly
sell himself, loomed the menace of the desert's brutality which he was
not equipped to fight and which he could overcome only by the
extraordinary precision and swiftness of his work.

The sun was not half an hour high when Roger reached the top of the
mountain behind the ranch. Here he gazed eastward across the low ranges
to a peak which dominated all the crests around it, a jagged, black and
brown monster, its top crimson now in the morning glow.

Roger stood breathing deeply, hat in hand, the sun turning his bronze
hair red, his thin strong body erect against the morning sky. He could
see no trail, so he determined to reach Snake Peak by a direct cross
line. The peak would be lost to view when he reached the valley below so
he sighted a lonely cedar on the crest of the opposite range and began
to climb downward. It was stiff going. The prickly pear cactus and the
ollas grew thick and the ground was covered with broken rock that made
short work of his already well-worn shoes.

When Roger reached the lonely cedar the sun was two hours high. He had
thought to make it in twenty minutes. He dropped, trembling with
weariness in the shadow of a little tree, drank deeply of the canteen
and gave himself ten minutes of rest, lying flat on his back, his eyes
on the magnificent expanse of the heavens.

The ten minutes up, he crossed the narrow ridge and after a moment found
a landmark on the opposite crest, a single black rock against a lavender
outcropping. Again he plunged into the narrow valley below him f