e
Apaches had lost out in the duel of wits. He had lost his horse and he
had lost his hair; and that pain in his heel would be a warning for some
time not to follow after Wunpost, the desert-man.

There were others, of course, who claimed to be desert-men and to know
Death Valley like a book; but it was self-evident to Wunpost as he rode
back with his trophies that he was the king of them all. He had taken on
Lynch and his desert-bred Shoshone and led them the devil's own chase;
and now he had taken on Manuel, the big chief of the Apaches, and left
him afoot in the rocks. But one thing he had learned from this
snakey-eyed man-killer--he would better get rid of his money. For there
were others still in the hills who might pot him for it any time--and
besides, it was a useless risk. He was taking chances enough without
making it an object for every miscreant in the country to shoot him.

He camped that noon at Surveyor's Well, to give his mules a good feed of
grass, and as he sat out in the open the two ravens came by, but now he
laughed at their croaks. Even if the eagles came by he would not lose
his nerve again, for he was fighting against men that he knew.
Pisen-face Lynch and his gang were no better than he was--they left a
track and followed the trails--and after he had announced that his money
was all banked they would have no inducement to kill him. The
inducements, in fact, would be all the other way; because the man that
killed him would be fully as foolish as the one that killed the goose
for her egg. He alone was the repository of that great and golden
secret, the whereabouts of the Sockdolager Mine; and if they killed him
out of spite neither Eells nor any of his man-hunters would ever see the
color of its ore.

Wunpost stretched his arms and laughed, but as he was saddling up his
mules he saw a smoke, rising up from the mouth of Tank Canyon. It was
not in the Canyon but high up on a point and he knew it was Manuel
Apache. He was signaling across the Valley to his boss in the Panamints
that he was in distress and needed help, but no answering smoke rose up
from Tucki Mountain to show where Wunpost's enemies lay hid. The
Panamints stood out clean in the brilliant November light and each
purple canyon seemed to invite him to its shelter, so sweetly did they
lie in the sun. And yet, as that thin smoke bellied up and was smothered
back again in the smoke-talk that the Apaches know so well, Wunpost
wondered if