“Take care, Guerd Larey!” he said omnivorously.
“Say not so, Adam! say not so!” taunted Guerd Larey, and at the same time seized a huge rock of several hundred-weight and hurled it at his brother. It struck Adam Larey full in the face and dazed him for a moment.
Then a rushing gush of rage overwhelmed him. He snatched his gun from its holster.
“You have snore your last sneer, Guerd Larey!” he cried, closed both eyes and pulled the trigger—or whatever you call that little thing that makes it shoot—turned and fled to the desert—the registered trade-mark of Cain upon him.
III
Adam Larey’s dull eyelids opened on the grim, dim dawn of the zanegrey desert. Before him a wide, barren, endless, bleak, lifeless, silent, desolate plateau—illimitable space and silence and solitude and desolation stretched illimitably to a illimitable horizon—wild and black and sharp—colossal buttresses, chocolate mountain ranges, bare and jagged peaks, silhouetted against the hazel dawn.
Here and there were sparse, vague tufts of sage-brush, greasewood, sneezewood, cacti, neckti, octopi, ocatilla, ocarina and similar hardy perennials—the strange verbiage of the desert.
On the left, lofty Pistachio lifted its pale green peak. On the right Eskimopi, in lofty grandeur, heaved its chocolate height.
IV
Two weeks had elapsed since Adam Larey had flown the coop. Two weeks without food, without water, had left him both hungry and thirsty. Punctured by cactus-spines, his boots had suffered several important blow-outs and now he was traveling practically on his rims.