night of her mother's death when he knelt before her in the desert.
As she had turned to the Seer then, she turned from the banker now.
And now, far more than then, his lonely heart hungered for her; for
with the years his need of her had grown. Envied of foolish men as
men so foolishly envy his class, the banker knew himself to be
destitute, an object of their pity. The poorest Mexican in his adobe
hut, with his half-naked, laughing children, was more wealthy than
he.
Jefferson Worth, that afternoon on the very scene of the tragedy
that had given Barbara to him, realized that in the land before him
he faced the greatest opportunity of his business career. He
realized also that he was as much alone in his life as he was alone
in the silent, barren waste that surrounded him. Would La Palma de
la Mano de Dios, which had given him the child that was not his
child, give him wealth that still never could be his?
At last, from his place on the sand drift that held the secret of
Barbara's life, he saw the sun as it appeared to rest for a moment
on the western wall before plunging down into the world on the other
side. Watching, he saw the purple of the hills deepen and deepen and
the wondrous light on the wide sea of colors fade slowly out as the
colors themselves paled and grew dim in the misty dusk of the coming
night. Slowly the twilight sky grew dark, and into the velvet plain
above came the heavenly flocks until their number was past counting
save by Him who leadeth them in their fields. Against the last
lingering light in the west that marked where the day had gone, the
mountains lifted their vast bulk in solemn grandeur as if to bar
forever the coming of another day. Closing about him on every hand,
coming dreadfully nearer and nearer, the black walls of darkness
shut him in. In the cool, mysterious breath of the desert, in the
grotesque, fantastic, nearby shapes and monstrous forms of the sand
dunes, in the mysterious phantom voices that whispered in the dark,
Jefferson Worth felt the close approach of the spirit of the land;
the calling of the age-old, waiting land--the silent menace, the
voiceless threat, the whispered promise.
And there, alone--held close in The Hollow of God's Hand as the long
hours of the night passed--the spirit of the man's Puritan fathers
stirred within him. In the silent, naked heart of the Desert that,
knowing no hand but the hand of its Creator, seemed to hold in its
hushed mysteriousness the ages of a past eternity, he felt his life
to be but a little thing. Beside the awful forces that made
themselves felt in the spirit of Barbara's Desert, the might of
Capital became small and trivial. Sensing the dreadful power that
had wrought to make that land, he shrank within himself--he was
afraid. He marveled that he had dared dream of forcing La Palma de
la Mano de Dios to contribute to his gains. And so at last it was
given him to know why Barbara instinctively shrank from him in fear.
With the coming of the day the banker went a little way back on the
trail where the vegetation was not entirely covered by the drifting
sand, and there gathered materials for a fire. Later, when he judged
his friends would be in sight, he fired the pile and, watching the
tall, thick column of smoke ascend, awaited the answer. In a little
while it came, faint and far away, the report of Texas Joe's forty-
five. Soon he heard the sound of voices calling loudly and,
following his answer, the swift hoof-beats of galloping horses; and
Tex and Abe, leading another horse appeared.