t it?"

"Where are you going?" inquired Cumnor.

"Up here a ways." And Jones jerked his finger generally towards the
Sierra, where they were heading.

"Thought you had a job in Tucson."

"That's what I have."

Specimen Jones had no more to say, and they rode for a while, their
ponies' hoofs always grating in the gravel, and the milk-cans lightly
clanking on the burro's pack. The bunched blades of the yuccas bristled
steel-stiff, and as far as you could see it was a gray waste of mounds
and ridges sharp and blunt, up to the forbidding boundary walls of the
Tortilita one way and the Santa Catalina the other. Cumnor wondered if
Jones had found the chain. Jones was capable of not finding it for
several weeks, or of finding it at once and saying nothing.

"You'll excuse my meddling with your business?" the boy hazarded.

Jones looked inquiring.

"Something's wrong with your saddle-pocket."

Specimen saw nothing apparently wrong with it, but perceiving Cumnor was
grinning, unbuckled the pouch. He looked at the boy rapidly, and looked
away again, and as he rode, still in silence, he put the chain back
round his neck below the flannel shirt-collar.

"Say, kid," he remarked, after some time, "what does J stand for?"

"J? Oh, my name! Jock."

"Well, Jock, will y'u explain to me as a friend how y'u ever come to be
such a fool as to leave yer home--wherever and whatever it was--in
exchange for this here God-forsaken and iniquitous hole?"

"If you'll explain to me," said the boy, greatly heartened, "how you
come to be ridin' in the company of a fool, instead of goin' to your job
at Tucson."

The explanation was furnished before Specimen Jones had framed his
reply. A burning freight-wagon and five dismembered human stumps lay in
the road. This was what had happened to the Miguels and Serapios and the
concertina. Jones and Cumnor, in their dodging and struggles to exclude
all expressions of growing mutual esteem from their speech, had
forgotten their journey, and a sudden bend among the rocks where the
road had now brought them revealed the blood and fire staring them in
the face. The plundered wagon was three parts empty; its splintered,
blazing boards slid down as they burned into the fiery heap on the
ground; packages of soda and groceries and medicines slid with them,
bursting into chemical spots of green and crimson flame; a wheel crushed
in and sank, spilling more packages that flickered and hissed; the
garbage