and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense of humor did not desert
him. He sat down on the skull of one of the burros and laughed--a dry
cackling gobble.

"What a great wonderful genius of a desert it is!" he mumbled. "It's
worth dying in after all--a fitting mausoleum for a Desert Rat. Here I
come staggering in, with murder in my heart, stultifying my manhood
with the excuse that it would be justice in the abstract, and the Lord
shows me an example of the vanity and littleness of life. All right,
Boston, old man. You win, I guess, but I've got an ace coppered, and
even if you do get through, some day you'll pay the price."

He sat there on the bleached skull, his head in his hands, trembling,
pondering, yet unafraid in the face of the knowledge that here his
wanderings must end. He was right. It was a spot eminently befitting
the finish of such a man. It was at least exclusive, for the vulgar and
the common would never perish here. In all the centuries since its
formation no human feet, save his own and those of the man whose
skeleton lay before him, had ever awakened the echoes in its silent
halls. Pioneers, dreamers both, men of the Great Outdoors, each had
heard the call of the silent places--each had essayed to fight his way
into the treasure vaults of the desert; and as they had begun, so had
they finished--in the arms of Nature, who had claimed the utmost of
their love.

The Desert Rat was a true son of the desert. To him the scowl of the
sun-baked land at midday had always turned to a smile of promise at
dawn; to him the darkest night was but the forerunner of another day of
glorious battle, when he could rise out of the sage, stretch his young
legs and watch the sun rise over his empire. He knew the desert--he saw