She felt as if she were about to cry. "That's another of your cruel
songs," she said.

"Learned it in Mexico--in Sonora." He talked easily. "It is the song of
the Gambucinos. You don't know? The song of restless men. Nothing could
hold them in one place--not even a woman. You used to meet one of them
now and again, in the old days, on the edge of the gold country, away
north there beyond the Rio Gila. I've seen it. A prospecting engineer
in Mazatlan took me along with him to help look after the waggons.
A sailor's a handy chap to have about you anyhow. It's all a
desert: cracks in the earth that you can't see the bottom of; and
mountains--sheer rocks standing up high like walls and church spires,
only a hundred times bigger. The valleys are full of boulders and black
stones. There's not a blade of grass to see; and the sun sets more red
over that country than I have seen it anywhere--blood-red and angry. It
_is_ fine."

"You do not want to go back there again?" she stammered out.

He laughed a little. "No. That's the blamed gold country. It gave me the
shivers sometimes to look at it--and we were a big lot of men together,
mind; but these Gambucinos wandered alone. They knew that country before
anybody had ever heard of it. They had a sort of gift for prospecting,
and the fever of it was on them too; and they did not seem to want the
gold very much. They would find some rich spot, and then turn their
backs on it; pick up perhaps a little--enough for a spree--and then be
off again, looking for more. They never stopped long where there were
houses; they had no wife, no chick, no home, never a chum. You couldn't
be friends with a Gambucino; they were too restless--here to-day, and