Before it could strike, with a quick fling of his tool he sent
the reptile whirling high in the air toward the precipice. But
from the clump of cactus growth along the parapet arose a
sahuaro, with branching arms, and against this the snake was
flung. Wrapped around the thorny top by the momentum of the
cast, it hung, hissing and rattling with pain and hatred.

The prospector looked up at the impaled rattlesnake with a smile.

Reminiscences of Sunday-school flashed across his mind.

"Gee, I'm a regular Moses," he ejaculated. "First I bring water
from the face of the rock, and then I lift up the serpent in the
wilderness. The year I've spent in the mountains and desert seem
like forty to me, and now, at last, I have a sight of the
Promised Land. God, what a magnificent view!"

Dropping his pick, he stretched out his arms with instinctive
symbolization of the wide prospect, and expression of an exile's
yearning for his native land.

"Over there is God's country, sure enough," he continued, giving
the trite phrase a reverential tone, which he had not used in his
first expression of the name of Deity. "Thank Him, the parallel
with old Moses stops right here. Many a time I thought I would
never get out of the mountains alive, and that my grave would be
unmarked by so much as a boulder with a red cross upon it. But
now, before night, I'll be back in the States, and in three more
days at home on the ranch. I promised to return in a year, and
I'll make good to the hour. I sure did hate to leave that strike,