ar
away from here. My God, to think that I should sell a rich claim like
that for nothing! But I wouldn't go back to it for all the gold in the
world. Three times I have tried, and each time that dog devil met me at
the edge of the desert, grinning at me with the face of my dead partner.
Here are the photographs and the map, take them and go, my head aches;
go away and leave me.'

"He buried his face in his hands, groaning and muttering to himself. The
Prospector put the bag of gold on the table, and taking the photographs
and map left the room. We followed him, closing the door softly behind
us."

"Did you find the gold?" I asked.

"I didn't look for it," answered the Drummer. "They offered to let me in
and give me a third interest for $300, but somehow I didn't like the
idea, and the whole thing seemed uncanny, and it is lucky I didn't. The
Prospector and the Eastern man got back a week later without having
discovered the 'Mound of Eternal Silence,' both mad as hatters, and each
laying the blame of the failure on the other. I have always wondered
since if Judson was really as crazy as they thought he was."

"Why," I asked, "what made you doubt it?"

"Oh," answered the Drummer, "I can't exactly say I disbelieve his story,
but--well, you see, about a month afterwards I was in Phoenix again,
and one night I saw the Prospector and the lunatic taking a drink at a
bar together. A little later the Prospector passed me without seeing me.
He was walking arm in arm with a stranger, and as they went by I heard
him say, 'If I had the money I never would think of asking any one to go
in with me. He calls it the "Mound of Eternal Silence...."'

"They passed on, and their voices were lost to me in the distance."

[Illustration: TIXINOPA.]

STORY OF A BAD INDIAN.

Malita was a half-breed, the daughter of an old squaw man. She had spent
several years at the Indian school in Phoenix, and had proved herself
an apt pupil. Later she went to work on Simmons' Ranch. She was a very
pretty, healthy looking girl, and one day Morgan Jones, the hunter and
trapper, asked her to marry him. She went with him to his cabin near the
Reservation and settled down.

Jones was a devil-may-care sort of chap, who, when he had a little
money, came to the straggling one-horse town near the Reservation, drank
considerable whiskey, and amused himself by running his pony up and
down the one street, firing off his gun, and shouting at th