During the daylight hours he was
seldom idle. At night he sat dreaming before the fire or paced to
and fro in the gloom. He slept but little, and that long after
Cameron had had his own rest. He was tireless, patient, brooding.
Cameron's awakened interest brought home to him the realization
that for years he had shunned companionship. In those years only
three men had wandered into the desert with him, and these had
left their bones to bleach in the shifting sands. Cameron had
not cared to know their secrets. But the more he studied this
latest comrade the more he began to suspect that he might have
missed something in the others. In his own driving passion to
take his secret into the limitless abode of silence and desolation,
where he could be alone with it, he had forgotten that life dealt
shocks to other men. Somehow this silent comrade reminded him.
One afternoon late, after they had toiled up a white, winding wash
of sand and gravel, they came upon a dry waterhole. Cameron dug
deep into the sand, but without avail. He was turning to retrace
weary steps back to the last water when his comrade asked him to
wait. Cameron watched him search in his pack and bring forth
what appeared to be a small, forked branch of a peach tree. He
grasped the prongs of the fork and held them before him with the
end standing straight out, and then he began to walk along the
stream bed. Cameron, at first amused, then amazed, then pitying,
and at last curious, kept pace with the prospector.
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