ANDY MACKINTAVERS was desert-wise, so far as automobile travel was concerned. He did not travel without spare water-bags and length of rolled chicken-wire, and at Meteorite he had fitted his flivver with a running-board pump.
After passing the marble cañon and negotiating the stretch of bad land where volcanic ash sifted into the air and obsidian glittered under foot, Murray steered the flivver down into the basin where all road was lost, where the loose sifting sands were blazing with the heat of an inferno, and where the car bogged down into the bottomless dust. Sandy deflated the tires, and when this would no longer serve, utilized the chicken-wire to run out of holes; by some miracle of desert sense, he managed to hold the right direction, although the rude map furnished them by Piute was useless to Murray.
It was nearly evening when they arrived at the spot dignified by the name of Morongo Valley, and the westering sun transmuted the sterile scene into one of glorious radiance and scarlet-tinged hues. All around stretched the peaks of the Dead Mountains, not clothed with the glorious forests of New Mexico, but with their naked eminences now gleaming in blue and scarlet fires of sunset, their valleys long streamers of darker purples, their bald slopes a yellow golden glory.
The valley itself was a box cañon, a small one, the upper end a solid mass of greenery. There was water here—a tiny trickle, that had been brought from the hillside to vivify the upper flat, and had given its precious life to all the higher slopes, before it lost itself in the farther sands.
The road, better preserved here, led them to the shack of Hassayamp. It was scarce worthy the name of shack—a rough erection of boards and scraps of tin, designed only to afford shelter from the elements. Sandy, standing beside the car and scrutinizing the hill-slopes, pointed upward.
"That's the mine, I'm thinkin'—that contraption o' timbers halfway up. It seems to have caved in. We're not interested in that, however; ruby silver is what'll make us sit up! Time for that in the morning."
Murray viewed the interior of the shack, and declared for sleeping in the open air.
They were up and about by sunrise. Murray was cool and rather sardonic in regard to the whole affair, but Mackintavers was cheerful and blithe as any boy of a prospector on his first search for earth-gold. The sight of that glittering silver ore, that wondrous ruby silver ore whose arsenic had ruined many a man and whose silver content had made thousands rich, was like a tonic in the blood of Sandy.
By evening they had gone over the ridge wherein lay the unfortunate Hassayamp, and had found no ruby silver vein. They had struck gold in promising lodes, but gold was naught before the ruby silver—if they found it. Sandy continued cheerful, and Murray was coolly complacent, doing as Mackintavers bade him but frankly without hope of success.
With the following morning, they took picks and labored valiantly until shortly before noon. Then Murray descried a little group of figures breaking its way toward them—not from the direction of Two Palms, but from the north, from the desert of the Colorado. The group resolved itself into two plodding, patient burros and the nondescript outline of a desert rat. The latter greeted them as they met him at the shack.
"Howdy, pilgrims! Seen your smoke this morning and sinct I was headin' in for town anyhow, I come this way. My land, but you're in style, ain't ye! Autobile an' all—say, is that a real autobile? I seen one oncet, las' time I was over to Eldorado—but sho! Here I be, forgettin' all decency! My name's George Beam, gents, though most folks address me as Sagebrush."
"Glad to meet you," said Sandy cordially, completing the introductions, "and ye better sit in with us for a snack, old-timer. Any luck?"
"Ain't kickin' none," said Sagebrush, combing the sand from his wealth of sodden gray whiskers. His eyes followed Murray. "Say, is them real bakin' powder biscuits ye got? Well, I never! They look real good, too, for them kind; I allus had a notion folks ought to study sour-dough more back in the settlements, but mebbe there's somethin' to bakin'
Sagebrush drifted along garrulously, glad of a chance to talk. Presently, when the coffee had been finished and pipes were lighted, he gazed around and grew personal.
"This here is a good place," he observed, "if it's quartz you're after, gents. If it don't intrude none, what ye lookin' for?"
Mackintavers chuckled, and produced his ruby silver samples.
"This," he answered laconically. "Know it?"
Sagebrush took the samples, inspected them, and then began to grin widely.