the desert, oletimer, yuh pack two of the biggest liars on earth right under your eyebrows.”  He chuckled at that.  “An’ most folks pack another one under their noses, fer luck.  Now lookit over there!  Prospector nothin’.  It’s the devil out walkin’ an’ packin’ a lantern.  He’s mebby found some shin bones an’ a rib or two an’ mebby a chewed boot, an’ he stopped there to have his little laugh.  Lemme tell yuh.  You mark where that fire is.  An’ t’-morra, if yuh like, I’ll take yuh over there.  If you c’n find a track er embers on that slope—­Gawsh!”

We both stood staring; while he talked, the light had blinked out like snapping an electric switch.  And that was strange because camp fires take a little time in the dying.  I stepped inside the tent, fumbled for the field glasses and came out, adjusting the night focus.  Casey’s squat, powerful form stood perfectly still where I had left him, his face turned toward the mountain.  There was no fire on the slope.  Beyond, hanging black in the sky, a thunder cloud pillowed up toward the peak of the mountain, pushing out now and then to blot a star from the purple.  Now and then a white, ragged gash cut through, but no sound reached up to where we were camped on the high mesa that was the lap of Starvation Mountain.  I will explain that Casey had come back to Starvation to see if there were not another good silver claim lying loose and needing a location monument.  We faced Tippipah Range twelve miles away,—­and to-night the fire on its slope.

“Lightning struck a yucca over there and burned it, probably,” I hazarded, seeking the spot through the glasses.

“Yeah—­only there ain’t no yuccas on that slope.  That’s a limestone ledge formation an’ there ain’t enough soil to cover up a t’rantler.  And the storm’s over back of the Tippipahs anyhow.  It ain’t on ’em.”

“It’s burning up again—­”

“Hit another yucca, mebby!”

“It looks—­” I adjusted the lenses carefully “—­like a fire, all right.  There’s a reddish cast.  I can’t see any flames, exactly, but—­” I suppose I gave a gasp, for Casey laughed outright.

“No, I guess yuh can’t.  Flames don’t travel like that—­huh?”

The light had moved suddenly, so that it seemed to jump clean away from the field of vision embraced by the glasses.  I had a little trouble in picking it up again.  I had to take down the glasses and look; and then I left them down and watched the light with my naked, lying eyes.  They did lie; they must have.  They said that a camp fire had abruptly picked itself up bodily and was slipping rapidly as a speeding automobile up a bare white slide of rock so steep that a mountain goat would give one glance and hunt up an easier trail.  All my life I have had intimate acquaintance with camp fires; I have eaten with them, slept with them, coaxed them in storm, watched them from afar.  I thought I knew all their tricks, all their treacheries.  I have seen apparently cold ashes blow red quite unexpectedly and fire grass and bushes and go racing away,—­I have fought them then with whatever came to hand.