bout that devil's lantern I follered. He's lit another one--
kinda hopin' we'll be fool enough to fall for it. You come inside where
yuh can't watch it. That's what does the damage--watchin' and wonderin'
and then goin' to see. I bet you wanta strike out right now and see just
what it is."

I didn't admit it, but Casey had guessed exactly what was in my mind. I
was itching with curiosity and trying to ignore the creepiness of it.
Casey went into the tent and lighted the candle and proceeded to unlace
his high hiking boots. "You come on in and go to bed. Don't yuh pay no
attention to that light--that's what the Old Boy plays for first, every
time; workin' your curiosity up. You ask anybody. He played me fer a
sucker and I told yuh about it, and yuh thought Casey was stringin' yuh.
Well, I can take a joke from the devil himself and never let out a yip--
but once is enough for Casey! I'm goin' to bed. Let him set out there and
hold his darn lantern and be damned; he ain't going to make nothin' off'n
Casey Ryan this time. You can ask anybody if Casey Ryan bites twice on the
same hook."

He got into bed and turned his face to the wall with a finality I could
not ignore. I let it go at that, but twice I got up and went outside to
look. There burned the light, diabolically like a signal fire on the peak,
where no fire should be. I began to seek explanations, but the best of
them were vague. Electricity playing a prank of some obscure kind,--that
was as close as I could get to it, and even that did not satisfy as it
should have done, perhaps because the high, barren mesas and the mountains
of bare rocks are in themselves weird and sinister, and commonplace
explanations of their phenomena seem out of place.

The land is empty of men, emptier still of habitations. There are not many
animals, even. A few coyotes, all of them under suspicion of having
rabies; venomous things such as tarantulas and centipedes, scorpions,
rattlers, hydrophobia skunks. Not so many of them that they are a constant
menace, but occasionally to be reckoned with. Great sprawling dry lakes
ominous in their very placidity; dust dry, with little whirlwinds
scurrying over them and mirages that lie to you most convincingly,
painting water where there is only clay dust. Water that is hidden deep in
forbidding canyons, water that you must hunt for blindly unless you have
been told where it comes stealthily out from some crevice in the rocks.
Indians know the wa