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Roger looked around the room in a dazed way, then back at Ernest "You sold e or permission? Ernest, it can't be true Why, you're my best friend!"

"Certainly I aer Sold me out Why I'd as soon you sold a child of mine Damn it, are you Germans born crooked?" He rose slowly "You picked my brains and sold the contents You sneaked on ht you were my friend! You've lied to me ever since you ca now uncontrollably "Why did you lie, you skunk?"

Ernest's face turned purple He leaned across the table and struck Roger in the er rushed around the table and seized Ernest by the throat "Now I' to kill you," he said between his teeth

Dick, shouting for Gustav, fought to break Roger's hold Gustav caer next was fully conscious of hi fro behind the ed When he reached the crest of the er paused, shaken and breathless There was the scraer turned to look Peter, packless and breathing hard, was following hier drew his shirt sleeves across his eyes He knew that Gustav and Dick had pulled him away from Ernest How much he had injured Ernest he did not know, nor, for the present, did he care He recalled that, with Ernesthim, that Charley had turned on him with furious eyes Then he had fled Not toward Archer's Springs where he was known But with a vague idea of crossing the Colorado into California, he had turned ard

He was fleeing not fro because with the discovery of Ernest's duplicity, the entire edifice of his life had tu of the desert, of the work he had attempted there, but most of all, a red hate for Ernest, carried hi e A blind desire to get away froet all that he had ever been or known, but above everything to get away fro the rub and his two gallon canteen which still was heavy ater For ahis burden to the burro's little back But Peter was so sed on to the west Peter fell in after him and two scarcely discernible specks on the immense floor of thebefore them There was no sound save that of their own footsteps There was no verdure here except the reat cacti, those soldiers of the waste, that guard the eternal solitudes There was no wind Only a breathless sense of brooding in the remote wonder of the sky The desert is a hard country; a country to try out the old