is mine, and no one could find it if he were dead,
it stood to reason that Eells would never kill him, or give orders to
his agents to kill. But what those agents were doing while they were out
in the field, and how far they would respect his wishes, was something
about which Eells knew no more than Wunpost, if, in fact, he knew as
much. For Wunpost had a limp in his good right leg which partially
conveyed the answer, and it was his private opinion that Lynch had gone
bad and was out in the hills to kill him. Hence his avoidance of the
peaks, and even the open trail; and the way he rode into water after
dark.

There were Indians at Wild Rose, Shooshon Johnny and his family on their
way to Furnace Creek for the winter; but though they were friendly
Wunpost left in the night and camped far out on the plain. It was the
same sandy plain over which he had fled when he had led Lynch to Poison
Spring, and as he went on at dawn Wunpost felt the first vague
misgivings for his part in that unfortunate affair. It had lost him a
lot of friends and steeled his enemies against him--Lynch no longer was
working by the day--and sooner or later it was likely to cost him dear,
for no man can win all the time. Yet he had thrown down the gauntlet,
and if he weakened now and quit his name would be a byword on the
desert. And besides he had made his boast to Wilhelmina that he would
come back with his assailant's back hair.

It was a matter of pride with John C. Calhoun that, for all his wild
talk, he never made his brag without trying to live up to his word. He
had stated in public that he was going to break Eells, and he fully
intended to do so; and his promise to get Lynch and Phillip F. Lapham
was never out of his mind; but this assassin, this murderer, who had
shot him without cause and then crawled off through the boulders like a
snake--Wunpost had schemed night and day from the moment he was hit to
bring the sneaking miscreant to book. He had some steel-traps in his
packs which might serve to good purpose if he could once get the
man-hunter on his trail; and he still fondly hoped to lure him over into
Death Valley, where he would have to come out of the hills.

No man could cross that Valley without leaving his tracks, for there
were alkali flats for miles; and when, in turn, Wunpost wished to cover
his own trail, there was always the Devil's Playground. There, whenever
the wind blew, the great sandhills were on the move, covering up