He was a stranger in a strange land, with a sore and yearning heart. While Adam untied his pack and spread out its contents the women fetched a low bench, a bucket of water, and a basin. These simple articles constituted the furniture of his new lodgings. He was to get his meals at the house, where, it was assured, he would be well cared for. In moving away, Margarita, who was looking back, caught her hair in a thorny branch of the mesquite. Adam was quick to spring to her assistance. Then she ran off after her mother.

“What eyes! Well, well!” exclaimed Adam, sensible of a warmth along his veins. Suddenly at that moment he thought of his brother Guerd. “I’m glad he’s not here.” Margarita had prompted that thought. Guerd was a handsome devil, irresistible to women. Adam went back to his unpacking, conscious of a sobered enthusiasm.

He hung his few clothes and belongings upon the walls, made his bed of blankets on the sand, and then surveyed the homely habitation with pleasure.

He found the old fisherman in precisely the same posture. Adam climbed on board the boat.

“Get any bites?” he queried.

“I believe I jest had one,” replied the fisherman.

Adam saw that he was about fifty years old, lean and dried, with a wrinkled tanned face and scant beard.

“Have a smoke,” said Adam, proffering one of the last of his cigars. “Lordy!” ejaculated the fisherman, his eyes lighting. “When have I seen one of them?…Young man, you’re an obligin’ feller. What’s your name?”

Adam told him, and that he hailed from the East and had been a tenderfoot for several memorable weeks.

“My handle’s Merryvale,” replied the other. “I came West twenty-eight years ago when I was about your age. Reckon you’re about twenty.”

“No. Only eighteen. Say, you must have almost seen the old days of ‘forty-nine.”

“It was in ‘fifty. Yes, I was in the gold rush.”

“Did you strike any gold?” asked Adam, eagerly.

“Son, I was a prospector for twenty years. I’ve made an’ lost more than one fortune. Drink an’ faro an’ bad women!…And now I’m a broken-down night watchman at Picacho.”

“I’m sorry,” said Adam, sincerely. “I’ll bet you’ve seen some great old times. Won’t you tell me about them? You see, I’m footloose now and sort of wild.”

Merryvale nodded sympathetically. He studied Adam with eyes that were shrewd and penetrating, for all their kindliness. Wherefore Adam talked frankly about himself and his travels West. Merryvale listened with a nod now and then.

“Son, I hate to see the likes of you hittin’ this gold diggin’s,” he said.

“Why? Oh, I can learn to take care of myself. It must be a man’s game. I’ll love the desert.”

“Wal, son, I oughtn’t to discourage you,” replied Merryvale. “An’ it ain’t fair for me to think because I went wrong, an’ because I seen so many boys go wrong, thet you’ll do the same…But this gold diggin’s is a hell of a place for a tough old timer, let alone a boy runnin’ wild.”

And then he began to talk like a man whose memory was a vast treasure store of history and adventure and life.