Adam looked from her to the ivory case in his hand.
“Her daughter Ruth—for me!” he said, wonderingly. “How strange if we met! If—if— But that’s impossible. She was wandering in mind.”
He carried the little case to his camp, searched in his pack for an old silk scarf, and, tearing this, he carefully wrapped the gift and deposited it inside the leather money belt he wore hidden round his waist.
“Now to get ready to leave Death Valley!” he exclaimed, in grim exultance.
Adam’s burros seldom strayed far from camp. This morning, however, he did not find them near the spring nor down in the notches of the mountain wall. So he bent his steps in the other direction. At last, round a corner of slope, out of sight of camp, he espied them, and soon had them trotting ahead of him.
He had traversed
