alling,
sliding and swearing, then scrambling and clambering with knee and elbow
and broken nail, until after another hour's interval, he cast himself
down on the lavender outcropping.

Snake Peak was now just across the canyon and he could see clearly the
gray white of the tailing dump that marked the mine. It was well after
eleven when in a fury of impatience he reached his final goal.

The loneliness of the untouched wilderness is not so great as that of
the deserted habitation. Roger had not felt the desert's solitude until
he dropped on a bench outside the cook house and began to examine the
lost endeavor about him. There were bunk houses and office buildings,
shaft and engine houses, aerial tramways and car tracks, all the many
and costly appurtenances of desert mining. Sand lay thick over
everything. The silence was complete save for the flopping of the torn
canvas that had been fastened over a hoist.

A sense of profound depression settled upon Roger. He dropped his head
in his hands with a groan. A dream, vastly better financed than his own,
had come to naught in the face of the distances and the difficulties of
the desert. Was there any greater hell, he wondered than to be hounded
by a creative desire for which there was no outlet; to have stored
within one's brain gifts indispensable to humanity's best development,
of which humanity would take heed only after the creator had been
crucified by desperate handicaps and indifference.

As Roger brooded, his eyes fell on the engine house and a carefully
locked shed beside it. His face brightened. He got stiffly to his feet
and plodded up to the window of the engine house, raised it and
clambered within. A great engine shrouded with greasy canvas lay in the
dusky room. It was a gas-producer type, in excellent condition. Roger
went over it as tenderly and eagerly as a horseman goes over a
thoroughbred racer. Then he went through the open door into the shed
adjoining. It was full of oil drums, some of them empty but with a
sufficient number filled to more than satisfy Roger's needs.

He suddenly began to whistle cheerfully, went over the engine again and
was still whistling when he climbed out of the window and sat down on
the bench to eat his lunch. When he had finished eating he lighted his
pipe and sat smoking at ease. Life was not so bad, by Jove! One could
make the desert his if one had resourcefulness and courage. As soon as
Dick's horses were rested after