Ajax looked at me reflectively.

“George,” said he, “shooting Pap wouldn’t help little Sissy, would it?  You and I can’t handle this job.  My brother will go.  But—­but, my poor old George, don’t make ropes out of sand.”

So I went.

When I started, the south-east wind, the rain-wind, had begun to blow, and it sounds incredible, but I was not aware of it.  The pestilence had paralysed one’s normal faculties.  But riding due south-east I became, sooner or later, sensible of the change in the atmosphere.  And then I remembered a chance remark of the doctor’s.  “We shall have this diphtheria with us till the rain washes it away,” and one of the squatters had replied, bitterly, “Paradise’ll be a cemetery an’ nothin’ else before the rain comes.”

Passing through some pine woods I heard the soughing of the tree-tops.  They were entreating the rain to come—­to come quickly.  How well I knew that soft, sibilant invocation!  Higher up the few tufts of bunch grass that remained rustled in anticipation.  On the top of the mountain, in ordinary years a sure sign of a coming storm, floated a veil of opaline sea mist ...

I found Pap and a greaser skinning a dead heifer.  Pap nodded sulkily, thinking of his hay and his beans and bacon.

“What’s up?” he growled.

“It’s going to rain,” said I.

“Ye ain’t ridden from Paradise to tell me that.  An’ rain’s not a-comin’, either.  ’Twould be a miracle if it did.  How’s folks?  I heard as things couldn’t be worse.”

“They are bad,” said I.  “Eubank’s sister-in-law and two children are dead.  Judge Spragg has lost four.  In all about sixteen children have gone and five adults.  That’s Paradise alone; in the foothills——­”

“What brings you here?”

It seemed hopeless to soften this hardened old man.  I had thought of a dozen phrases wherewith to soap the ways, so to speak, down which might be launched my petition.  I forgot them all, confronted by those malicious, sneering eyes, by the derisive, snarling grin.

“Little Sissy Leadham is dying.”

“What d’you say?”

“Little Sissy Leadham is dying.”

For my life I could not determine whether the news moved him or not.

“Wal?”

“And she’s asking for you.”

“Askin’—­fer me?”

At last I had gripped his attention and interest.

“Why?”

“She wants to give you her money.”

“Then it wa’n’t a plant?  ‘Twa’n’t fixed up atween you boys an’ her?”

“It was her own idea—­an idea so strong that it has taken possession of her poor wandering wits altogether.”

“Is that so?” He moistened his lips.  “And you—­ye’ve come up here to ask me to go down there, into that p’isonous Paradise, because a little girl who ain’t nothin’ to me wants to give me three dollars and a half?”

“If you get there in time it may save her life.”