Now all of his business of buying and selling was done and there remained but to go home or to look further for Courtot.  He rode back into Las Palmas and breakfasted at the lunch counter.  There he learned that Courtot had probably gone on up to Quigley, another twenty-five miles to the north-east.  And, very largely because of the geographical location of Quigley, Howard decided on the instant to continue at least that far his quest.  For, coming the way he had from his ranch, he had described a wide arc, almost a semicircle, and by the same trail, should he retrace it, was a hundred and fifty miles from Desert Valley.  But, if he went on to Quigley, a mining-town in the bare mountains, he would be at the mouth of Quigley Pass, which led to a little-used trail through the mountains and almost in a straight line across the arm of the desert known locally as the Bad Lands.  Though he had never crossed these weary, empty miles, and though there were no towns and few water-holes within their blistered scope, Howard judged that he could save close to fifty miles of the return trip.  So he slipped his foot into the stirrup and swung out toward Quigley, hopeful of finding Courtot and confident of a short cut home.

Chapter XII

The Desert Supreme

Considerably to his surprise Howard found absolutely no trace of Courtot in Quigley.  He inquired at the pool room, at the restaurant, at the stable.  No one had seen the gambler for several months.  It struck the cattleman as strange that a man should have ridden out of Las Palmas, taking the Quigley trail, and not have come to Quigley.  Where else could a man go?  On the west lay the desert, on the east the Lava Mountains and beyond the desert again, and it was a far call to any settlement or habitation.  Even the sheepmen did not come up this way; only the Quigley mines brought men here, and yet Courtot had not come to Quigley.

‘He turned out somewhere,’ mused Howard, ’the Lord knows what for or where.  But it’s his business, and I’m going home.’

He gave his horse an hour in the stable while he himself made ready for his short cut across the Bad Lands.  The preparations were simple; at the store he bought a small pack of provisions, enough to last him three or four days at a pinch and in case of accidents; he filled his canteen; he spent half an hour with the grizzled old storekeeper, who in his time had been a prospector and who knew the country hereabouts as only an old prospector could know it.  On a bit of wrapping-paper the old fellow sketched a trail map that indicated the start through the Pass, the general direction and the chief landmarks, the approximate mileage and—­here he was very exact and accompanied his sketch with full verbal instructions—­the few water-holes.

‘You can make it all right, Al,’ he said when Howard slipped the paper into his vest pocket.  ’It’s no trick for a man like you.  But I wouldn’t send a tenderfoot in there, not unless I wanted to make him over into a dead tenderfoot.  And, mind you, every year some of them water-holes dries up; the only ones you can count on for sure are the ones I’ve marked with a double ring that way.  So long.’