ough for a small
herd, but the other side is jest plain hell with the lights out, one big
slice of desert thirty mile' wide."

"Minin' camp over that way, ain't there?"

"Was. There's a lava bed strip of six-seven miles at the end of the
pass, then comes a bu'sted mesa, all box canyon an' rim-rock, shot with
caves, nothin' greener than cactus an' not much of that. There's a
twenty per cent. grade wagon road, or there was, for it warn't
engineered none too careful, that run over to the mines. I was over
there once, nigh on to ten years ago. They called the camp Hopeful then.
Next year they changed the name to Dynamite. Jest natcherully blew up,
did that camp. Nothin' left but a lot of tumbledown shacks an' a couple
hundred shafts an' tunnels leadin' to nothin'. Reckon this P. Casey is a
prospector, Sam. One of them half crazy old-timers, nosin' round tryin'
to pick up lost leads. One of the 'riginal crowd that called the dump
Hopeful, like enough. Desert Rat. Them fellers is born with hope an'
it's the last thing to leave 'em."

"Hope's a good hawss," said Sam. "But it sure needs Luck fo' a runnin'
mate."

"You said it." Sandy relapsed into silence.

At the far end of the pass the dog struggled to get down. They looked
out upon a stretch of desolation. Sandy had called it six or seven
miles. It might have been two or twenty. The deceit of rarefied air was
intensified by the dazzle of the merciless sun beating down on powdered
alkali, on snaky flows of weathered lava, on mock lakes that sparkled
and dissolved in mirage. The broken mesa, across which ran the road to
the deserted mining camp, mysteriously changed form before their eyes;
unsubstantial masses in pastel lights and shades of saffron, mauve and
rose. Over all was the hard vault of the sky-like polished turquoise.

"I'll let him give us a lead," said Sandy, "soon as we hit the lava. We
can foller his trail that fur. Sit tight, son." Grit whined but subsided
under the restraining hands.

"How about a drink 'fore we tackle that?" asked Sam, nodding at the
shimmering view.

"Better hold off for a while." Sandy took the lead, bending from the
saddle, reading the trail that Grit's paws had left in the alkali and
sand. Cactus reared its spiny stems or sprawled over the ground more
like strange water-growths that had survived the emptying of an inland
sea than vegetation of the land. Once the dog's tracks led aside to a
scummy puddle, saucered by alkali, dotte