He viewed his shrunken body, knew that he stooped and shuffled, realized that he had paid the inevitable, the inexorable price for the secret. His wine of dreams had evaporated.... He sifted the coarse gold between his fingers, letting it fall back into the pan. Was it for _this_ that he had wasted his soul?
In the desert town men began to notice the regularity of his comings and goings. Two or three of them foregathered in the saloon and commented on it.
"He packed some dynamite last trip," asserted one.
There was a silence. The round clock behind the bar ticked loudly, ominously.
"Then he's struck it at last," said another.
The third man nodded. Then came silence again and the absolute ticking of the clock. Presently from outside in the white heat of the road came the rush of hoofs and an abrupt stop. A spurred and booted rider, his swarthy face gray with dust, strode in, nodded to the group and called for whiskey.
"Which way did he go, Saunders?" asked one.
"Let's set down," suggested the third man.
They shuffled to a table. The bartender brought glasses and a bottle. Then, uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat with them. The rider looked at him pointedly.
"Oh, I'm in on this," asserted the bartender. "Daugherty is the Wells-Fargo man here. He won't talk to nobody but me--about _business_."
"What's that got to do with it?" queried the rider.
"Just what you'd notice, Saunders. Listen! The rat left a bag of dust in the Company's safe last trip. Daugherty says its worth mebby five hundred. He says the rat's goin' to bring in some more. Do I come in?"
"You're on," said the rider. "Now, see here, boys, we got to find out if he's filed on it yet, and what his name is, and then--"
"Mebby we'd better find out _where_ it is first," suggested one.
"And then jump him?" queried the rider over his glass.
"And then jump him," chorused the group. "He's out there alone. It's easy." And each poured himself a drink, for which, strangely enough, no one offered to pay, and for which the bartender evidently forgot to collect.
Meanwhile the prospector toiled through the drought of that summer hoarding the little yellow flakes that he washed from the gravel in the cañon.
All round him for miles each way the water-holes had gone dry. The little cañon stream still wound down its shaded course, disappearing in a patch of sand at the cañon's mouth, so the prospector felt secure. None had ridden out to look for him through that furnace of burning sand that stretched between the hills and the desert town.