“Your man Shea is settin’ in my car yonder,” said Mrs. Crump.

Heedless of the glaring sun, she picked up her pipe and disposed her giant frame for converse. From narrowed lids the sheriff eyed the lanky, up-drawn figure of Shea, which he now noticed for the first time. Then he produced the “makings” and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

“Glad you picked him up,” said he. “I’ll take him back with me.”

“No, ye won’t,” retorted Mrs. Crump, calmly. “You’ll not touch him, Sam Tracy.”

“He’s a thief and a drunkard and a hobo,” said the sheriff.

“If they wasn’t no drinks to be had in heaven, I reckon hell would be majority choice,” quoth the lady. “When it comes to that, I’ve seen you and Crump so paralyzed you couldn’t talk. There was that night down to Magdalena when the railroad spur was finished and they held a celebration——”

The sheriff grinned. “No need to argue further along them lines, ma’am. You win!”

“I reckon I do, Sam. Besides, you ain’t got no authority over in this county. You can run a bluff on ignorant hoboes an’ greasers, but not on Mehitabel Crump! Your authority quit quite a ways back. Thady Shea only stole because he was starving, which I’d do the same in his place. I picked him up here and I’m goin’ to keep him.”

“You always was soft-hearted,” reflected Tracy. “Now you got him, what’s your programme?”

Mrs. Crump refilled and lighted her corncob with deliberation, then made response:

“Sam, I’m sure in a thunderin’ bad pinch. Damned good luck it ain’t worse, as Crump used to say at times. You know I ain’t no legal shark, huh? Well, three weeks ago I had a blamed good hole in the hills, until Abel Dorales come along and located just below me. Then in rides old Sandy Mackintavers and offers a thousand even for my hole, saying that Abel had located the thrown apex of my claim——”

“The apex law don’t obtain here,” put in Tracy.

“I know it; but who’s goin’ to argue with Mackintavers? If it wasn’t that, it’d be somethin’ worse. Anyhow, he offered to compromise and so on.”

The sheriff nodded. “I see how you come to have the flivver,” he observed, drily.

“Yas, ye do!” Mrs. Crump’s response was raw-edged. “If you was the kind o’ man you used to be, ye’d up and give them jumpers a hemp necktie! But now ye play politics, Sam Tracy, and ye lick the boots o’ Sandy Mackintavers——”

“That’s enough, Mis’ Crump!” broke in the sheriff, icily. “I don’t blame ye for feelin’ sore, but the likes of us can’t fight Mackintavers in the courts. We ain’t slick enough! And Dorales is a Mormon-bred greaser, than which the devil ain’t never fathered a worse combination. Now, Mis’ Crump, you show me the least excuse for doin’ it legally, and I’ll pump them two men full o’ lead any day! I’m only surprised that you didn’t do it.”

“I did.” A smile of grim satisfaction wreathed the lady’s firm lips. “First I took Sandy’s money, then I lets fly. They was several hired greasers with Dorales, and I reckon I got two-three; ain’t right sure. I only got Abel glancingly, and when I threw down on Sandy his arms was both elevated for safety. All I could decently do was to nick his ear so’s he’d remember me.”

“You didn’t kill Dorales?”

“Afraid not.” Mrs. Crump sadly shook her head. “I didn’t wait to inquire none, but it looked like I’d only blooded his shoulder and he was layin’ low to plug me in the back, so I belted him over the head with the butt, and slid for home.”

The sheriff, astounded, emitted a long whistle. “Whew-w!” he said, slowly. “Say, whereabouts did all this happen?”

“Down the Mogollons. Over Arizony way.”

“Why didn’t ye go west into Arizony, then? After that doin’s this state will be too hot to hold ye——”

“Oh, Sandy won’t go to law over the shootin’. It’d make him look too ridic’lous.”

The sheriff threw back his head and laughed with all the uproarious abandon of a man who laughs seldom but well.

“Best look out for yourself,” he cautioned. “That there Dorales will be on your trail till hell freezes over, ma’am! I sure would admire to see you in action on that crowd!”

“You’ll see me in action when that there car gets movin’ again,” she retorted. “She bucks like a range hoss and kicks to beat hell—why, I couldn’t hardly keep the saddle!”

The sheriff arose and went to the dust-white flivver. He adjusted the spark, cranked, and for a moment listened to the engine before killing it. Then he threw back the hood, and, under the sombre eyes of Thady Shea, worked in silence. At length he finished his task, started the engine again, and with a nod of satisfaction shut it off.

“Thought mebbe so,” he stated, rejoining the lady. “Your spark plugs was fouled. Well, ma’am, what can I be doin’ for you?”

“Ye might send me a wire in care of Coravel Tio whenever ye get a line on Dorales or Mackintavers. I’m fixing to meet them again.”

“How come?” demanded the sheriff in surprise.

Mrs. Crump gestured with her pipe toward the flivver.

“I got a sack of ore in there that I found in the lava beds or thereabouts. I suspicions it’s one o’ these new-fangled things nobody give a whoop for in the old days, but that draws down the money now. If it is, then you can lay that Sandy will hear I’ve found it, and he’ll be after me to jump the claim.”

“He sure does keep a line on prospectors,” reflected the sheriff. “And skins ’em, too, mostly. But he does it legal.”

“Yep. If this here stuff is any good, Sam, they’s going to be some smoke ’fore he gets his paws on it! Where you goin’ from here? Back to Albuquerque?”

“Nope. I got some business up at the capital.”

“Will ye tote that ore sack and a letter up to Coravel Tio for me—and do it strictly under your hat?”

“You bet I will, ma’am!”

Mrs. Crump unstrapped the burlap sack. With the sheriff’s pencil and paper she settled down to write a letter. The process was obviously painful and laborious, but at length it was finished. The sheriff shook hands, picked up the sack, and turned to his car. Mrs Crump had already restored him his revolver.

“Take good care of yourself, ma’am—and your hobo! Adios.”

Mrs. Crump watched the trail of dust disappear in the direction of Santa FÉ, then she turned to the flivver and looked up at Thady Shea.

“They’s a new corncob laying in back somewheres. You can have it, Thady. Get out here and settle down for a spell o’ talk. If ye act real good I’ll give ye a drink.”

“I don’t want any,” came Shea’s muffled voice as he leaned back in search of the pipe.

“That’s a lie. You’re fair shaking for liquor and a drop will brace ye up.”

Shea procured the pipe, filled and lighted, and promptly assumed, as a garment, his usual histrionic pose. The gulp of liquor which Mrs. Crump carefully measured out sent a thin thread of colour into his gaunt, unshaven cheeks.

“Madam, I owe you all,” he announced sonorously. “I have not missed the heart of things set forth in this your discourse to the sheriff’s ear, and I have gathered that your need is great for the strong arms of friends, the counsel wise——”

“You got it,” cut in Mrs. Crump, curtly. “The p’int is, Thady, where do you come in? Listen here, now! I got a good eye for men; ye ain’t much account as ye stand, but ye got the makin’s. Now cut out the booze and I’ll take ye for partner, savvy? What’s more, I’ll spend a couple o’ weeks attending to it that ye do cut out the booze! I sure need a partner who ain’t liable to sell me out to them heathen. Can ye down the booze, or not?”

Something in her tone cut through the man’s posturing like a knife. As a matter of fact, he was miserable in spirit; his soul quivered nakedly before him, and he was ashamed. For a space he did not answer, but stared at the far mountains. The strong tragedy of his face was accentuated and deepened into utter bitterness.

What Mrs. Crump had only vaguely and darkly seen Thady Shea observed clearly and with wonder; yet, just as she missed the more mystical side of it, he missed the more practical side. More diverse creatures wearing human semblance could scarce have been found than these twain, here met upon a desert upland of New Mexico—the woman, a self-reliant mountaineer and prospector who knew only her own little world, the man a drunkard, a broken-down “hamfatter,” who knew all the outside world which had rejected him. They had come together from different spheres.

As he sat there staring, he mentally and for the last time reviewed the life that lay behind him; before him uprose all the contemptuous years, the sad wreckage of high hopes and tinsel glories, the hard and wretched fact of liquor. He would shut it out of his mind forever, after to-day, he thought. He would live in the present only, from day to day. He would try a new life—and let the dead bury their dead!

He turned to Mrs. Crump, his sad and earnest eyes looking oddly cynical.

“I do not think it humanly possible that I can resist liquor,” he said, gravely. “I am frank with you. It were easy to swear that I would pluck out drowned honour by the roots—but, madam, I think that this morning I am weary of swearing. I have tried to abstain, and I cannot. Always it is the first week or two of torture that downs me——

“You’re showin’ sense, now,” said the lady. “Want to try it or not?”

He rose in the car and attempted a bow in his showy and pitiful manner. In this bow, however, was an element of grace, the more pronounced by its sharp contrast to his gaunt, sombre aspect.

“Madam, I am deeply sensible of the compliment you pay me. Yet, in picking from the gutter a drunken failure, are you wise? I am entirely ignorant of prospecting and——”

“Don’t worry none. Ye’ll learn that quick enough.”

Again Thaddeus bowed. “But, madam, I understand that prospectors go off into the desert places and live. In justice to yourself, do you not think that your enemies might seize viciously upon the least excuse for misinterpretation of character——”

For the first time Shea saw Mehitabel Crump gripped in anger. He paused, aghast.

Her gigantic form quivered with rage then stiffened into towering wrath. Her tanned, age-touched features suddenly hardened into sentient bronze from which her blue eyes blazed forth terribly, jewelled indices of an indomitable and quick-flaming spirit within.

“Thady Shea, it’s well for you them words come from an honest heart,” said she, with a slow and grim emphasis. “They ain’t no one goin’ to say a word agin’ me, except them for what I don’t give a tinker’s dam; and if one o’ them dasts to say it in my hearin’, chain lightnin’ is goin’ to strike quick and sudden! This here territory—state, I mean—knows Mehitabel Crump and has knowed her for some years back. Paste that in your hat, Thady Shea!”

As some dread lioness hears in dreams the horns and shouts of hunters, and starting erect with bristling front mutters her low and terrible growl of challenge, so Mehitabel Crump defiantly faced Thaddeus.

He, poor soul, inwardly cursed his too-nimble tongue, and shrank visibly from the spectacle of wrath. Before the hurt and amazed eyes of him Mrs. Crump suddenly abandoned her righteous attitude. Having palpably overawed him, she now felt ashamed of herself.

“There, buck up,” she brusquely ordered.

“Tell me, now! If I answer for it that ye stay sober a couple o’ weeks or so, will ye make the fight?”

“Yes.” Hope fought against despair in Shea’s voice; he knew his own weakness well.

“All right. Let’s go, then!”

“We’re going to Santa FÉ?”

Mrs. Crump advanced to the front of the flivver, and seized the crank. Then she paused, her blue eyes striking up over the radiator at Shea.

“No, I ain’t goin’ to Santy FÉ; neither are you! We’re goin’ to the most man-forsaken spot they is in all the world, I reckon. We got grub, and everything else can wait a couple o’ weeks or so. Accordin’ to the Good Book, Providence was mighty rushed about creation, but I ain’t in no special hurry about makin’ a man of you——”

Her words were drowned in the engine’s roar. Thaddeus Roscius Shea made himself as small as possible; Mrs. Crump crowded in under the wheel, the car swaying to her weight, and they leaped forward.

In silence she drove, pushing the flivver with a speed and abandon which left Shea clinging desperately to his seat. Twenty minutes later an intersecting road made its appearance; Mrs. Crump left the highway and followed this road due north for a couple of miles. There, coming to an east-and-west road which was decidedly rough, she headed west.

“This here’s the trail to Cochiti pueblo,” she announced, enigmatically.

Four miles of this, and she struck an even worse road that headed northwest. Shea’s eyes opened as they progressed. Never in all his life had he encountered such grotesque country as this which now lay on every hand as though evoked by magic—utter desolation of huge rock masses, blistered and calcined by ancient fires, eroded into strange spires and pinnacles of weird formation. To the north towered Dome Rock with its adjacent crater. No sign of life was anywhere in evidence.

Shea was helplessly gripped by the personality of the woman beside him. Mentally he was overborne and awed; physically he was sick—not ill, but downright sick, possibly due to the sparse gulps of liquor which he had downed, possibly to the glaring sun. He cared not whether he lived or died. He felt that this day had brought him to the end of his rope, and that nothing more could matter.

“Getting into the lava beds,” observed Mrs. Crump, cheerfully. Shea understood her words only dimly. “This here Henry sure does go pokin’ where you’d think nothin’ short of a mule could live! The trail peters out a bit farther, then we got to hoof it over to the Rio Grande and make camp.”

Poor Shea shivered. The frightful desolation of the scene horrified him. He had never been an outdoor man. His had ever been the weakness, the dependency of the sheltered and civilized being. Contact with this strangely primitive woman frightened him. He felt like babbling in his terror, begging to be taken back and allowed to resume his place among the swine. Here was something new, awful, incredible! But he held his peace.

Had he been able to look a few miles ahead; had he foreseen what lay before him in that camp in White Rock CaÑon, a place which in grandeur and inaccessibility rivalled the great caÑon of the Colorado; had he known that he was about to tread a trail which few white men had ever followed—in short, had he understood what Mehitabel Crump’s plan held in store for him, he would at that moment have yielded up the ghost, cheerfully!

At last, reaching a sheer incline where boulders larger than the car itself filled all the trail and rendered further progress impossible, Mrs. Crump killed her engine and set her brakes hard.

“I guess Henry can lay here all his life and never be stole,” she said, with a sigh of relaxation. “Well, Thady, here we are! D’you know what? It ain’t lack of ambition that makes folks mis’able and unsatisfied; it’s lack o’ purpose. Now, I aim to teach ye some purpose, Thady. Look at me! I been prospectin’ all my life, and still goin’ strong, just because I got a definite object ahead—to strike it rich somewheres!

“Well, climb down. We got to rig up some grub into packs, hoof it to the nearest canoncito, and reach the Rio Grande. It’s less’n two mile in a straight line to water, but twenty ’fore we gets there, if we gets there a-tall. Come on, limber up!”

Thaddeus Roscius Shea groaned inaudibly—but limbered up.