e up a tree. I'm flat."

"We'll go just the same if you can't raise a bean," said Barlow
positively. "But if you can dig anything, for God's sake scrape
lively. We want to get there before somebody else does. And I was
hopin' you'd come across for grub and some guns and odds and ends."

"I've got a few oil shares," said Kendric. "If they're roosting around
par they're good for twenty-five hundred."

Barlow brightened.

"We'll knock 'em down in San Diego if we only get two fifty!" he
announced, considering the sale as good as made. "And we'll do the
best we can on what we get."

Not yet had Kendric agreed to go adventuring with Twisty Barlow. But
in his soul he knew that he would go, and so did Barlow. There was
nothing to hold him here; from elsewhere the voice which seldom grew
quiet was singing in his ears. He knew something of the gulf into
which Barlow meant to lead him, and of that defiant, legend-infested
strip of little-known land which lay in a seven hundred mile strip
along its edge; he knew that if a man found nothing else he would stand
his chance of finding life running large. It was the last frontier and
as such it had the singing voice.

"You'll go?" said Barlow.

But first Kendric asked his few questions. When he had answers to the
last of them his own eyes were shining. His truant fancies at last had
been snared; he was going headlong into the thing, he had already come
to believe that at the end of it he would again have filled his pockets
the while he would have drunk deep of the life that satisfied. It was
long since he had smelled the sea, had known ocean sunrise and sunset,
had gone to sleep with his bunk swaying and the water lapping. So when
again Barlow said, "You'll come?" Kendric's hand shot out to be gripped
by way of signing a contract, and his voice rang out joyously, "Put her
there, old mate! I'm with you, blow high, blow low."

For a few minutes they planned. Then Barlow hurried off to make what
few arrangements were necessary before they could be in the saddle and
riding toward a railroad. Kendric meant to get two or three hours'
sleep since he realized that even his hard body could not continue
indefinitely as he had been driving it here of late. There was nothing
to be done just now that Barlow could not do; before the saddled horses
could be brought for him he could have time for what rest he needed.

The thought of bed was pleasant as he walked on for he re