I came back to the girl. She had quit sobbing now, was lying back staring hard-eyed up at the stars.
The wind began to blow, suddenly.
I waited until nature asserted itself and the girl drifted off to sleep. Then I put the saddle under her head, a blanket over her. The sand was drifting rapidly, hissing its subtle whispers.
She spoke drowsily, her mind far, far distant.
“Hear it... Jusssssss-s-s-stice!”
Then she slept again.
I located the claim in her name, put up the notice, took samples of rock. About the time the moon was down, I shook her awake.
The sand was talking.
“What is it?” She sat up.
She saw me standing over her. I could see a sneer on her lips.
“Damned brute,” she said.
“We’ve got to go,” I told her.
“Where to?”
“Bakersfield. We go to Kernville over the mountains. Then we get an automobile and go to Bakersfield.”
“What for?”
“To register ‘The Whip Hand.’ ”
“What’s that?”
“Your claim.”
“What claim?”
“The one your grandpa left you.”
Her breath came in a hissing gasp, just as it had done the night before when she had first discovered I was watching her.
“What are you talking about?”
I took her hand, led her to the rock, switched on the flash light.
She looked at what was disclosed in the ancient diggings, the crumbling quartz, rotten with gold. Her eyes bulged. She tried to talk, but no sounds came.
“Come,” I told her, and then I showed her the location notice.
She read it. By that time she had her speech.
“You tricked them after all! Beat them at their own game!” she said.
I nodded.
“It’s half yours!” she exclaimed impulsively. “You get the share they were to have.”
I shook my head.
“No. I’ve got five hundred dollars for a claim I was going to abandon. That’s enough for one day’s work. And I’ll make those desert slickers the laughing stock of every camp between here and Needles.”
Her lips were firm.
“I’ll sign over a half of it to you. You can’t stop me.”
“You can sleep on that,” I told her. “In the meantime, we’d better see that we get the claim registered. Otherwise you might not have anything after all.”
We traveled the ridges in a short-cut I knew of. By daylight we could look down on the Kernville road. The sand was still whispering, wiping out our tracks.
“Does the sand seem to talk to you?” she asked.
I nodded my head.
She looked to the east. The sun was getting over the rim of the desert. The sky was a vivid red, shot with gold.
“I guess there’s a God after all,” she said softly.