That night Bud shared Cash Markham's blankets, and in the
morning he cooked the breakfast while Cash Markham rounded up the
burros and horses. In that freemasonry of the wilderness they
dispensed with credentials, save those each man carried in his
face and in his manner. And if you stop to think of it, such
credentials are not easily forged, for nature writes them down,
and nature is a truth-loving old dame who will never lead you far
astray if only she is left alone to do her work in peace.

It transpired, in the course of the forenoon's travel, that
Cash Markham would like to have a partner, if he could find a man
that suited. One guessed that he was fastidious in the matter of
choosing his companions, in spite of the easy way in which he had
accepted Bud. By noon they had agreed that Bud should go along
and help relocate the widow's claim. Cash Markham hinted that
they might do a little prospecting on their own account. It was a
country he had long wanted to get into, he said, and while he
intended to do what Mrs. Thompson had hired him to do, still
there was no law against their prospecting on their own account.
And that, he explained, was one reason why he wanted a good man
along. If the Thompson claim was there, Bud could do the work
under the supervision of Cash, and Cash could prospect.

"And anyway, it's bad policy for a man to go off alone in this
part of the country," he added with a speculative look across the
sandy waste they were skirting at a pace to suit the heavily
packed burros. "Case of sickness or accident--or suppose the
stock strays off--it's bad to be alone."