Enoch moistened his lips. "What's the story, Curly?" he asked evenly.
Curly filled and lighted his pipe. But before he could answer Enoch, Mack said;
"Sleep on it, Curly. Mud slinging's bad business. Sleep on it!"
"I've a great contempt for Brown," said Enoch. "I'm a good deal tempted to help you out, that is, if it is to the interest of the public that the story be told."
"It will interest the public. You can bet on that!" Curly laughed sardonically. Then he rose, with a yawn. "But it's late and we'll finish the story to-morrow night. Judge, I have a hunch you're my man! I sabez there's heap devil in you, if we could once get you mad."
Enoch shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps!" he said, and he unrolled his blankets for bed.
But it was long before he slept. The hand of fate was on him, he told himself. How else could he have been led in all the wide desert to find this man who held Brown's future in his hands? Suddenly Enoch saw himself returning to Washington with power to punish as he had been punished. His feeble protests to Curly were swept away. He felt the blood rush to his temples. And anger that had so far been submerged by pain and shame suddenly claimed its hour. His rage was not only at Brown. Luigi, his mother, most of all this woman who had been his mother, claimed his fury. The bitterness and humiliation of a lifetime burst through the gates of his self-control. He stole from the cave to the sandy shore and there he strode up and down like a madman. He was physically exhausted long before the tempest subsided. But gradually he regained his self-control and slipped back into his blankets. There, with the thought of vengeance sweet on his lips, he fell asleep.
Curly was, of course, entirely engrossed the next day by his mining operations. Enoch had not expected or wished him to be otherwise. He felt that he needed the day alone to get a grip on himself.
That afternoon he climbed up the plateau to the entering trail, up the trail to the desert. He was full of energy. He was conscious of a purposefulness and a keen interest in life to which he had long been a stranger. As he filled the gunny sack which he carried for a game bag with quail and rabbits, he occasionally laughed aloud. He was thinking of the expression that would appear on Curly's face if he learned into whose hands he was putting his dynamite?