. "Poor Jeff! We must lighten your pack. Now if that
hunchback had died here, the birds would have done his business for him
without help from any of your cats. Am I saying that, now, or only
thinking it? I know I'm alone. I've travelled that way in this world.
Why?" He turned his face, expecting some one to answer, and the answer
came in a fierce voice: "Because you're a man, and can stand this world
off by yourself. You look to no one." He suddenly took out the
handkerchief and tore the photograph to scraps. "That's lightened my
pack all it needs. Now for these boys, or they'll never make camp." He
took what the mules carried, his merchandise, and hid it carefully
between stones--for they had come near the mountain country--and,
looking at the plain he was leaving, he saw a river. "Ha, ha!" he said,
slyly; "you're not there, though. And I'll prove it to you." He chose
another direction, and saw another flowing river. "I was expecting you,"
he stated, quietly. "Don't bother me. I'm thirsty."

But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertile
place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. "Peaches too!" he sang
out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. "I don't
seem able to stop your foolish talking," he said, "but you shall not
chase around like that. You'll stay with me. I tell you that's a sham.
Look at it." Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks
thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the
same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting
until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left,
and he ran half-way there, calling his mother's name. "Why, you fool,
she's dead!" He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among
stones. "Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago," he murmured, softly.
"Didn't stay to see you get wicked." Then he grew stern again. "You've
showed yourself up, and you can't tell land from water. You're going to
let the boys take you straight. I don't trust you."

He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse's tail, and they set
out in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead for
the water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting man
brought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feet
sliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher,
and the peaks blazed in the hot sky; slate and sa