When a woman treads the ways of deceit she smiles–like Mona Lisa. But was the great Leonardo deceived by the smile of his wife when she posed for him so sweetly? No, he read her thoughts–how she was thinking of another–and his master hand wove them in. There she smiles to-day, smooth and pretty and cryptic; but Leonardo, the man, worked with heavy heart as he laid bare the tragedy of his love. The message was for her, if she cared to read it, or for him, that rival for her love; or, if their hearts were pure and free from guilt, then there was no message at all. She was just a pretty woman, soft and gentle and smiling–as Virginia Huff had smiled. She had not smiled often, Wiley Holman remembered it now, as he went flying across the desert, and always there was something behind; but when she had looked up at Blount and taken his fat hand, then he had read her heart at a glance. If he had taken his punishment and not turned back he would have been spared this great ache in his breast; but no, he was not satisfied, he could Wiley cursed to himself as he bored into the wind and burned up the road to Keno. The mine was nothing; he could find him another one, but Virginia had played him false. He did not mind losing her–he could find a better woman–but how could he save his lost pride? He had played his hand to win and, when it came to the showdown, she had slipped in the joker and cleaned him. The Widow would laugh when she heard the news, but she would not laugh at him. The road lay before him and his gas tanks were full. He would gather up his belongings and drift. He stepped on the throttle and went roaring through the town, but at the bottom of the hill he stopped. The mine was shut down, not a soul was in sight, and yet he had left but a few hours before. He toiled wearily up the trail, where he had caught Virginia running and held her fighting in his arms, and the world turned black at the thought. What madness had this been that had kept him from suspecting her when she had opposed his every move from the start. Had she not wrecked his engine and ruined his mill? Then why had he trusted her with his money? And that last Yes, she had sold him out for money; after rebuking him from the beginning she had stabbed him to the heart for a price. It was always he, Wiley, who thought of nothing but money; who was the liar, the miser, the thief. Everything that he did, no matter how unselfish, was imputed to his love of money; and yet it had remained for Virginia, the censorious and virtuous, to violate her trust for gain. It was not for revenge that she had withheld the payment and snatched a million dollars from his hand; she had told him herself that it was because Blount had returned their stock and she would not throw it away. How quick Blount had been to see that way out and to bribe her by returning the stock–how damnably quick to read her envious heart and know that she would fall for the offer. Well, now let them keep it and smile their smug smiles and laugh at Honest Wiley; for if there ever was a curse on stolen money then Virginia’s would buy her no happiness. He raised his bloodshot eyes to look for the last time at the Paymaster, which he had fought for “Put ’em up!” he snarled, rising swiftly from behind the car, and the hot fury left Wiley’s brain. His anger turned cold and he looked down the barrel at the grinning, spiteful eyes behind. “You go to hell!” he growled, and George jabbed the gun into his stomach. “Put ’em up!” he ordered, but some devil of resistance seized Wiley as his hands went up. It was close, too close, and George had the drop on him, but one hand struck out and the other clutched the gun while he twisted his lithe body aside. At the roar of the shot he went for his own gun, leaping back and stooping low. Another bullet clipped his shirt and then his own gun spat back, shooting blindly through the smoke. He emptied Wiley flicked out his cylinder and filled it with fresh cartridges, then looked around for the rest. He was calm now, and calculating and infinitely brave; but no one stepped forth to face his gun. A boy, down in town, started running towards the mine, only to turn back at some imperative command. The whole valley was lifeless, yet the people were there, and soon they would venture forth. And then they would come up, and look at the body, and ask him to give up his gun; and if he did they would take him to Vegas and shut him up in jail, where the populace could come and stare at him. Blount and Jepson would come, and the Board of Directors; and, in order to put him away, they would tell how he had threatened George. They would make it appear that he had come to jump the mine, and that George was defending the property; and then, with the jury nicely packed, they would send him to the penitentiary, where he wouldn’t interfere with their plans. In a moment of clairvoyance he saw Virginia From his safe in the office Wiley took out a roll of bills, all that was left of his vanished wealth; and he took down his rifle and belt; and then, walking softly past the body of Stiff Neck George, he cranked up his machine and started off. Every doorway in town was crowded with heads, craning out to see him pass, and as he turned down the main street he saw Death Valley Charley rushing out with a flask in his hand. “We seen ye!” he grinned as Wiley slowed down, and dropped the flask of whiskey on the seat. “You killed him fair!” he shouted after him, but Wiley had opened up the throttle and the answer to his praise was a roar. He passed an ancient tractor, abandoned by the wayside, and a deserted, double-roofed house; and then, just below it where a ravine came down, he saw a sign-board, pointing. Up the gulch was another sign, still pointing on and up, and stamped through the metal of the disk was the single word: Water. It was Hole-in-the-Rock Springs that old Charley had spoken about and, somewhere up the canyon, there was a hole in the limestone cap, and beneath it a tank of sweet water. On many a scorching day some prospector, half dead from thirst, had toiled up that well-worn trail; but now the way was empty, the freighter’s house given over to rats, and the road led on and on. A jagged, saw-tooth range rose up to block his way and the sand-flat narrowed down to a deep wash; and, then, still thundering on, he The Valley was dry, bone-dry and desiccated, and yet every hill, every gulch and wash and canyon, showed the action of torrential waters. The chocolate-brown flanks of the towering mountain walls were creased, and ripped out and worn; and from the mouth of every canyon a great spit of sand and boulders had been spewed out and washed down towards the Sink. On the surface of this wash, rising up through thousands of feet, the tips of buried mountains peeped out like tiny hill-tops, yet black, and sharp and grim. The The westering sun caught the glint of water in the poisonous, salt-marshes of the Sink; but, far to the south, the great ultimate Sink of Sinks was a-gleam with borax and salt. It was there where the white band widened out to a lake-bed, that men came in winter to do their assessment work and scrape up the cotton-ball borax. But if any were there now they would know him for a fugitive and he took the road to the west. It ran over boulders, ground smooth by rolling floods and burned deep brown by the sun, and as he twisted and turned, throwing his weight against the wheels, Wiley felt the growing heat. His shirt clung to his back, the sweat ran down his face and into his stinging eyes and as he stopped for a drink he noticed that the water no longer quenched his thirst. It was warm and flat and after each fresh drink the perspiration burst from every pore, as if his very skin cried out for moisture. Yet his canteen was getting light and, until he could find water, he put it resolutely away. The road swung down at last into a broad, flat dry-wash, where the gravel lay packed hard as iron, and as his racer took hold and began to leap The deep wash pinched in, as the other had done, before it gave out into the plain; and, then, as he whirled around a point, he glided out into the open. The foothills lay behind him and, straight athwart his way, stretched a sea of motionless sand-waves. As far north as he could see, the ocean of sand tossed and tumbled, the crests of its rollers crowned with brush and grotesque drift-wood, the gnarled trunks and roots of mesquite trees. To the east and west the high mountains still rose up, black and barren, shutting in the sea of sand; but across the valley a pass led smoothly up to a gap through the wall of the Panamints. It was Emigrant Wash, up which the hardy Mormons had toiled in their western pilgrimage, leaving at Lost Wagons and Salt Creek the bones of whole caravans as a tribute to the power of the desert. A smooth, steep slope led swiftly down to the |