The Forbidden Trail

"You are in excellent health again, Mr. von Minden," said Ernest. "Don't you plan ever to return to the Vaterland?"

"Yes! Yes!" cried Crazy Dutch, "but only when I can return with an empire in my hand for my Kaiser."

"Hoch!" said Gustav softly, "Hoch!"

"Hoch!" Roger and Ernest took up the exclamation with a laugh and a wave of their pipes, and Charley joined them, smiling. Von Minden looked deeply pleased.

"Yes! Yes!" he cried. "You all are good children, properly educated, ready to understand Germany as the citizens of no other country. You all speak German? Yes! And you all know German literature and music to be the best. Yes, ah, these great universities and high schools, they are doing their work wonderfully."

"If I fall down all together in getting my plant funded in this country, I'm going to Germany with it," said Roger abruptly.

"No, you aren't!" cried Charley, quickly; "I love Germany too, but America comes first."

Ernest rose with a sigh. "That may be, but with me, bed comes first."

"You will not be cross the next time we meet, eh?" asked Crazy Dutch as the men made their adieux.

"I'll try not to be!" replied Roger, not too enthusiastically.

When they had crawled into their cots, an hour later, Roger said: "Ern, do you realize that we haven't a drop of crude oil for the absorber flow?"

"Sure, I do," replied Ernest. "I've been wondering for days what we would do about it, but until I had a suggestion, I didn't want to bring the matter up."

"How much money do you think the Dean can get for the laboratory equipment?" asked Roger.

"Well, I hope at least two hundred dollars. But you know how those things go."

"We'll have to save every cent of that for grub," mused Roger. "Dick told me that over on Snake Peak there is a mine that closed down four years ago and that their engine was an oil burner. He says there hasn't been a watchman there for a year. There's a chance that they have left some oil."

"How'll you pay for it?" asked Ernest.

"Pay for it!" grunted Roger. "Wait till I find it, will you? You and Gustav clean up after the storm to-morrow and go on with the absorber. I'll take a tramp up to Snake Peak."

He was on his way before sun-up, the next morning, a canteen of water over his shoulder and a lunch in his pocket. He moved as rapidly as the heavy walking permitted, driven by a sense of impatience to which he gave no name. But subconsciously he realized that forever behind that beauty of the desert to which, like Von Minden, he felt he might gladly sell himself, loomed the menace of the desert's brutality which he was not equipped to fight and which he could overcome only by the extraordinary precision and swiftness of his work.