His visitor looked up quickly, as if startled by the sound of a human voice.  He replied, and then the two men talked a little.  But the stranger evidently preferred silence.  Cameron understood that.  He laughed grimly and bent a keener gaze upon the furrowed, shadowy face.  Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold!  Cameron felt that between this man and himself there was a subtle affinity, vague and undefined, perhaps born of the divination that here was a desert wanderer like himself, perhaps born of a deeper, an unintelligible relation having its roots back in the past.  A long-forgotten sensation stirred in Cameron’s breast, one so long forgotten that he could not recognize it.  But it was akin to pain.

II

When he awakened he found, to his surprise, that his companion had departed.  A trail in the sand led off to the north.  There was no water in that direction.  Cameron shrugged his shoulders; it was not his affair; he had his own problems.  And straightway he forgot his strange visitor.

Cameron began his day, grateful for the solitude that was now unbroken, for the canyon-furrowed and cactus-spired scene that now showed no sign of life.  He traveled southwest, never straying far from the dry stream bed; and in a desultory way, without eagerness, he hunted for signs of gold.

The work was toilsome, yet the periods of rest in which he indulged were not taken because of fatigue.  He rested to look, to listen, to feel.  What the vast silent world meant to him had always been a mystical thing, which he felt in all its incalculable power, but never understood.

That day, while it was yet light, and he was digging in a moist white-bordered wash for water, he was brought sharply up by hearing the crack of hard hoofs on stone.  There down the canyon came a man and a burro.  Cameron recognized them.

“Hello, friend,” called the man, halting.  “Our trails crossed again.  That’s good.”

“Hello,” replied Cameron, slowly.  “Any mineral sign to-day?”

“No.”

They made camp together, ate their frugal meal, smoked a pipe, and rolled in their blankets without exchanging many words.  In the morning the same reticence, the same aloofness characterized the manner of both.  But Cameron’s companion, when he had packed his burro and was ready to start, faced about and said:  “We might stay together, if it’s all right with you.”

“I never take a partner,” replied Cameron.

“You’re alone; I’m alone,” said the other, mildly.  “It’s a big place.  If we find gold there’ll be enough for two.”

“I don’t go down into the desert for gold alone,” rejoined Cameron, with a chill note in his swift reply.