Adam lingered in his travel through the beautiful Palo Verde Valley, and at last reached the long swell of desert slope that led down to the Rio Colorado.

Tranquil and sad was his gaze on the majestic river as it swirled red and sullen between its wide green borders toward the upflung wilderness of colored peaks he remembered so well.

All day he strode behind his faithful burros, here high on the river bank where he could see the somber flood rolling to the south, and there low in the willow-shaded trail. And though he had an eye for the green, dry coverts and the wide, winding valley, he seemed to see most vividly the scenes of boyhood and of home. And the memory revived the love he had borne his brother Guerd. High on the grassy hill at the old village school—he was there once again, wild and gay, playing the games, tagging at the heels of his idol.

The miles slipped by under his tireless stride. Hour by hour he had quickened his pace. And when sunset caught him with its call to camp, he could see the grand purple bulk of old Picacho looming in the sky. Twilight and dusk and night, and the lonely camp fire! He heard the sullen gurgle of the river in the weeds and he saw the trains of stars reflected along its swirling surface. A killdeer, most mournful of birds, pealed his plaintive, lonely cry. Across the blue-black sky gleamed a shooting star. The wind stirred in the leaves, gently and low, and fanned the glowing embers, and bore the white ashes away into the darkness. Shadows played from the flickering blaze, fantastic and weird, like dancing specters in the gloom. Adam watched the gleaming river rolling on to its grave in the Gulf. Like all things, it died, was dispersed, and had rebirth in other climes. Then he watched the stars at their grand and blazing task.

On the afternoon of the third day he turned under the red bluff into the basin of Picacho. Long the trail had been overgrown and dim, and cattle tracks were scarce. The wide willow and mesquite flat, with its groves of cottonwoods, had grown denser, wilder, no more crisscrossed by trails. Adam had slowed down now, and he skirted the edge of the thicket till he reached the bank of bronze rock that had flowed down from the peaks in ages past. The ocatillas, so pearly gray, softly green, and vividly scarlet, grew there just the same as long ago when he had plucked a flower for the dusky hair of Margarita. He welcomed sight of them, for they were of the past.

And here, side by side, stood the crucifixion tree and the palo verde under which Margarita had told him their legends. The years had made no change that Adam could discern. The smoke tree and the green tree raised their delicate, exquisite, leafless foliage against the blue of sky, beautiful and soft, hiding from the eye the harsh law of their desert nature.

Adam tarried here. His wandering steps were nearing their end. And he gazed across the river at the wilderness of Arizona peaks. It seemed he knew every one. Had he seen them yesterday or long ago?

The sculptured turrets of Picacho were taking on a crown of gold, and from the sheer, ragged bluffs of the purple mass shadows and hazes and rays were streaming down into the valley. One golden streak slanted from the wind-worn hole in the rim. Solemn and noble the castled mountain towered in the sky. In its lonely grandeur there was strength.

One moment longer Adam watched and listened, absorbing the color and glory and wildness, stung to the depths of his heart by his farewell to loneliness. He retrograded one last instant to the savage who sensed but did not think. He thrilled to the old, mysterious, fading instinct. Then, as in answer to a sonorous call in his ear, he measured slow and laboring strides through the aisles to the river.

His burros scratched their packs on the thorny mesquites to get down to the arrowweed and willow. Where once had been open bank, now all was green, except for a narrow sandy aisle. The dock was gone. A sunken barge lay on a bar, and moored to its end were two leaky skiffs. Traffic and trade had departed from the river landing. Adam remembered a prospector had told him that the mill had been moved from the river up to the mine under the peak. So now, he thought, supplies and traffic must come and go by way of Yuma.

He drove his burros down the sandy aisle. A glimpse of an old adobe wall, gray through the mesquites, stopped his heart. He went on. The house of Arallanes was a roofless ruin, the vacant windows and doors staring darkly, the walls crumbling to the sands. The shed where Adam had slept was now half hidden by mesquites. The ocatilla poles were bleached and rotten and the brush was gone from the roof; but the sandy floor looked as clean and white as the day Adam had spread his blankets there. Fourteen years! Silent he stood, and the low, mournful wind was a knell. The past could never be undone.

He went back to the lane and to the open. Old stone walls were all that appeared left of houses he expected to see. Over the trees, far up the slope, he espied the ruins of the dismantled mill. Unreal it looked there, out of place, marring the majestic sweep of the slope.

His keen desert nostrils detected smoke before he saw blue columns rising through the green. He passed a plot of sand-mounded graves. Had they been there? How fierce a pang pierced his heart! Rude stones marked the graves, and on one a single wooden cross, crude and weathered, slanted away. Adam peered low at the lettering—M. A. And swiftly he swung erect. There was a cluster of houses farther on, low and squat, a few of them new, but most of them Adam remembered. A post-office sign marked this village of Picacho. The stone-fronted store looked just the same, and the loungers there might never have moved from their tracks in fourteen years. But the faces were strange.

A lean old man, gray and peaked, detached himself from the group and tottered toward Adam with his cane in the sand.

“Wal, stranger, howdy! You down from upriver?”

His voice twanged a chord of memory. Merryvale! Slowly the tide of emotion rose in Adam’s breast. He peered down into the gray old face, with its narrow, half-shut eyes and its sunken cheeks. Yes, it was Merryvale.

“Howdy, friend!” replied Adam. “Yes, I come from up the river.”

“Strange in these parts, I reckon?”

“Yes. But I—I was here years ago.”

“Was, I knowed you was strange because you come in by the river. Travelers nowadays go round the mountain. Prospectors never come any more. The glory of Picacho has faded.”

“Aren’t they working the mill?” queried Adam, quickly.

“Haw! Haw! The mill will never grind with ore that is gone! No work these last five years. The mill has rusted out—fallen to ruin. And the gold of old Picacho is gone. But, stranger, she hummed while she lasted. Millions in gold—millions in gold!”

He wagged his lean old head and chuckled.

“I knew a man here once by the name of Arallanes. What has become of him?”

“Arallanes? Wal, I do recollect him. I was watchman at the mill an’ he was boss of the gang. His daughter was knifed by a greaser named Felix.... Arallanes left here these ten years ago an’ he’s never been back.”

“His—daughter!... Is that her grave back there—the sunken mound of sand—with the wooden cross?”

“I reckon that’s Margarita’s grave. She was a pretty wench—mad about men—an’ there’s some who said she got her just deserts.”

The broad river gleamed yellow through the breaks in the mesquites. Ponderous and swirling, it glided on round the bend. Adam’s gaze then sought the peak. The vast, stormy, purple mass, like a mountain of cloud, shone with sunset crown of silver.

Somewhere near, hidden by the trees, a Mexican broke the stillness with song—wild, sensuous, Spanish love, in its haunting melody.

“I knew another man here,” began Adam, with the words a sonorous knell in his ear. “His name was Collishaw.... What’s become of him?”

“Collishaw? Never will forgit him!” declared the old man, grimly. “Last I heard he was cheatin’ Injuns out of water rights over here at Walters—an’ still lookin’ fer somebody to hang.... Haw! Haw! That Collishaw was a Texas sheriff.”

Suddenly Adam bent lower, so that his face was on a level with Merryvale’s.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

“Wal, I shore don’t, stranger,” declared the other. “I’ve been nigh fifty years in the West an’ never seen your like yet. If I had I’d never forgot.”

“Merryvale, do you remember a lad who shot off your fishing line one day? Do you remember how you took interest in him—told him of Western ways—that he must be a man?”

“Shore I remember that lad!” exclaimed Merryvale, bluntly. He was old, but he was still keen. “How’d you know about him?”

“I am Adam Larey!”

The old man’s eyes grew piercing. Intensely he gazed, bending closer, strong and thrilling now, with the zest of earlier experience sharp in his expression.

“I know you now. It’s Adam. I’d knowed them eyes among a thousand, if I’d only looked. Eagle’s eyes, Adam, once seen never forgot!... An’ look at the giant of him! Wai, you make me feel young again.... Adam, lad, I ain’t never forgot ye—never! Shake hands with old Merryvale.”

Agitated, with tremulous voice and shaking hands, he grasped Adam, almost embracing him, his gray old face alight with gladness.

“It’s good to see you, Merryvale—to learn you’ve not forgotten me—all these years.”

“Lad, you was like my own!... But who’d ever know you now? You’ve white hair, Adam, an’—ah! I see the desert in your face.”

“Old friend, did you ever hear of Wansfell?”

“Wansfell? You mean thet wanderer the prospectors tell about?... Shore, I’ve been hearin’ tales of him these many years.”

“I am Wansfell,” replied Adam.

“So help me God!... Wansfell?... You, Adam, the kindly lad!... Didn’t I tell you what a hell of a man you’d be when you grew up?”

Adam drew Merryvale aside from the curiously gathering loungers.

“Old friend, you are responsible for Wansfell.... And now, before we tell—before I go—I want you to take me to—to—my—my brother’s grave?”

Merryvale stared.

“What?” he ejaculated, and again his keen old eyes searched Adam’s.

“Yes. The grave—of my brother—Guerd,” whispered Adam.

“Say, man!... You think Guerd Larey’s buried here?... Thet’s why you come back?”

Astonishment seemed to dominate Merryvale, to hold in check other emotions.

“My friend,” replied Adam, “I came to see his grave—to make my peace with him and God—and to give myself up to the law.”

“Give yourself—up—to the law!” gasped Merryvale. “Have you gone desert mad?” “No. I’m right in my mind,” returned Adam, patiently. “I owe it to my conscience, Merryvale.... Fourteen years of torture! Any punishment I may suffer here, compared with those long years, will be as nothing.... It will be happiness to give myself up.”

Merryvale’s lean jaw quivered as the astonishment and concern left his face. A light of divination began to dawn there.

“But what do you want to give yourself up for?” he demanded.

“I told you. My conscience. My need to stand right with myself. To pay!”

“I mean—what’d you do?... What for?”

“Old friend, you’ve grown thick of wits,” rejoined Adam. “Because of my crime.”

“An’ what was thet, Adam Larey?” queried Merryvale, sharply.

“The crime of Cain,” replied Adam, sadly. “Come, friend—take me to my brother’s grave.”

Merryvale seemed galvanized from age to youth.

“Your brother’s grave!... Guerd Larey’s grave? By heaven! I wish I could take you to it!... Adam, you’re out of your head. You are desert mad.... Bless you, lad, you’ve made a terrible mistake! You’re not what you think you are. You’ve hid in the desert fourteen years—you’ve gone through hell—you’ve become Wansfell—all for nothin’!... My God! to think of thet!... Adam, you’re no murderer. Your brother is not dead. He wasn’t even bad hurt. No—no—Guerd Larey’s alive—alive—alive!”

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