|12|The second meeting between Adam and the prospector Dismukes occurred at Tecopah, a mining camp in the Mohave Desert.
The mining camp lay in a picturesque valley where green and gray growths marked the course of the gravel-lined creek, and sandy benches spread out to dark, rocky slopes, like lava, that heaved away in the bleak ranges.
It was in March, the most colorful season in the Mohave, that Adam arrived at Tecopah to halt on a grassy bench at the outskirts of the camp. A little spring welled up here and trickled down to the creek. It was drinking water celebrated among desert men, who had been known to go out of their way to drink there. The telltale ears of Adam’s burros advised him of the approach of some one, and he looked up from his camp tasks to find a familiar figure appro
