He replied, and then the two men talked a little.
But the stranger evidently preferred silence. Cameron understood
that. He laughed grimly and bent a keener gaze upon the furrowed,
shadowy face. Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom
there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold!
Cameron felt that between this man and himself there was a subtle
affinity, vague and undefined, perhaps born of the divination that
here was a desert wanderer like himself, perhaps born of a deeper,
an unintelligible relation having its roots back in the past. A
long-forgotten sensation stirred in Cameron's breast, one so long
forgotten that he could not recognize it. But it was akin to pain.
II
When he awakened he found, to his surprise, that his companion had
departed. A trail in the sand led off to the north. There was no
water in that direction. Cameron shrugged his shoulders; it was
not his affair; he had his own problems. And straightway he forgot
his strange visitor.
Cameron began his day, grateful for the solitude that was now unbroken,
for the canyon-furrowed and cactus-spired scene that now showed no
sign of life. He traveled southwest, never straying far from the
dry stream bed; and in a desultory way, without eagerness, he hunted
for signs of gold.
The work was toilsome, yet the periods of rest in which he indulged
were not taken because of fatigue. He rested to look, to listen,
to feel.
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