if anybody does, and I've never been down the shaft. Now
suppose I'd go over there and shoot it out with George and get
possession of my mine. First Blount would come up with some other hired
man-killer and I'd have a bout with him; and then your respected
mother----"

"Now you hush up!" she chided and he closed down his jaw like a
steel-trap. She watched him covertly, then her eyes began to blink and
she turned her head away. The desert rushed by them, worlds of waxy
green creosote bushes and white, gnarly clumps of salt bush; and
straight ahead, frowning down on the forgotten city, rose the black
cloud-shadow of Shadow Mountain.

"Oh, turn off here!" she cried, impulsively as they came to a fork in
the road and, plowing up the sand, he skidded around a curve and
struck off up the Death Valley road. They came together at the edge of
the town--the long, straight road to the south, and the road-trail
that led west into the silence. There were no tracks in it now but the
flat hoof-prints of burros and the wire-twined wheel-marks of desert
buckboards; even the road was half obliterated by the swoop of the
winds which had torn up the hard-packed dirt, yet the going was good
and as the racer purred on Virginia settled back in her seat.

"I can't believe it," she said at last, "that we're going to leave here,
forever. This is the road that Father took when he left home that last
time--have you ever been over into Death Valley? It's a great, big
sink, all white with salt and borax; and at the upper end, where he went
across, there are miles and miles of sand-hills. He's buried out there
somewhere, and the hills have covered him--but oh, it's so awful
lonesome!"

She turned away again and as her head went down Wiley stared straight
ahead and blinked. He had known the Colonel and loved him well, and his
father had loved him, too; but that rift had come between them and until
it was healed he could never be a friend of Virginia's. She distrusted
him in everything--in his silence and in his speech, his laughter and
his anger, in his evasions and when he talked straight--it was better to
say nothing now. He had intended to help her, to offer her money or any
assistance he could give; but her heart was turned against him and the
most he could hope for was to get back to Keno without a quarrel. The
divide was far ahead, where the road struck the pass and swung over and
down into the Great Valley; and, glancing up at the sun, he t