VII
Eight years Adam Larey dwelt in the desert, growing daily stronger, finer, purer in its illimitable wilds—the abode of purity, silence and tarantulas. Climbing inaccessible heights, striding over impassable plains, stalking the savage antelope, the impatient grizzly, the querulous bob-cat, he acquired the eye of a mountain-sheep, the ear of a deer, the nose of a wolf and many other trophies of the chase.
He loved the lure of the desert. He learned its lore. The secrets of nature were disclosed to him. He knew whether the antelope chews her cud with a full set of teeth, upper and lower, or has to gum it in part—why grizzly-bears always walk in single file and why they never do—why the bark of a coyote or of a tree, whichever it is, is always rougher on the north or the south side, as the case may be—wherein the joyous cry of the great blue condor, weeping for its children, differs from the melancholy note of the lounge lizard courting its mate—whether the gray desert wolf is indigenous, like the horned toad, or monogamous, like the rattlesnake—whether the jack-rabbit’s tail curls in the direction of the movement of hands of a watch, like the trailing arbutus, or counter-clockwise, like the lesser celandine—whether the giraffe lies down to sleep or merely appears to do so—whether the mesquite-bush attracts lightning or whether it is the lightning’s own fault—whether sound travels faster in the direction in which it is going or in the opposite direction—whether the vulture finds carrion by the odor emanating from its prey or by its own sense of smell—whether the bob-cat can see in the dark as well or not as well or better or worse or at all or not at all or at night or partially or impartially or which, if any—Adam Larey at last knew the answers to all these questions as well as Stewart Edward White or any Boy Scout in America.
He had adopted the name of Woncefell—in memory of his single lapse from virtue, his momentary liaison with Margarita, the Maid of Muchacho. As Woncefell, the Wanderer, he was known and feared throughout that desert land.