The stories he had heard from Jim and Haney constantly haunted him. He could not drive them away. In imagination he saw himself lying on the white, hot sands with open mouth, protruding tongue, black face and sightless eyes. The picture sent a thrill of horror through him and moved his dizzy, flagging brain to fresh resolution. He stumbled on through the blazing, parching, cruel heat, sometimes falling and lying motionless for a time, then pulling himself up and going on with will newly braced by the fear that he might not rise again. Once he sank, groaning, his courage quite broken, and mumbled to himself that he could go no farther. As he fell the loud whirr of a rattlesnake sounded from the bush of greasewood beside him. Instinctive fear instantly mettled his nerves and he sprang up and leaped away from the hidden enemy. The fear of this danger, of which he had not thought before, steadied his brain once more and helped him bend his will unyieldingly to the task of going on and on and on, forever and forever, through the burning, blasting heat.
Often he turned from his course and wandered aimlessly about in wrong directions, forgetting for a time his objective point and remembering only that he must keep going. Once he came upon human bones, with shreds of clothing lying about, and stood staring at them, his eyes held by the fascination of horror. Finally he forced himself to move on, and after he had tramped through the scorching sand for a long time, he found himself staring again at the bleaching skeleton. Through his heat-dazed brain the thought made way that the fascination of this white, nameless thing had cast a spell upon him and had drawn him back to die here, where his bones might lie beside these that had whitened this desert spot for so many months. Perhaps this poor creature’s soul hovered over his death place and in its loneliness and desolation had fastened ghoulish talons into his and would pin him down to die in the same spot. The idea took instant possession of his bewildered mind and filled him with such quaking fear and horror that he turned and ran with new strength and speed, as if the clawing, clamoring ghost were really at his heels.
By mere blind luck he ran in the right direction, and when next he had conscious knowledge of his surroundings he was lying on the ground at the mouth of the Fernandez pass, well up in the mountains, with the white moonlight all about him. Dazedly he thought it would be better for him to lie still and rest, but from somewhere back in his mind came the conviction that there was something upon which he must keep his eyes fastened, some place toward which he must go, and that he must keep on going and going, until he should reach it. Determination rose spontaneously, and he got up and stumbled on, frequently falling, but always soon rising again and keeping on with his journey. After a long time he saw something that glittered in the moonlight. His first thought was “water!” and with a cry that died in his parched, swollen throat he sprang forward and seized it. But it was only a bottle, a flat, empty whisky flask. He turned it over and over in his hands with a haunting notion that in some way it was connected with his past.
Slowly the recollection shaped itself in his heat-bewildered faculties that he and the two men who were luring him away had drunk from this flask here and that then he had thrown it beside the road. Presently the idea grew out of this recollection that he was on the right road and that soon he would come to the house where there was water. The thought made him spring forward again, and he rushed on aimlessly, thinking of nothing but that somewhere ahead of him there was water. He ran on and on, now this way and now that, falling and lying unconscious, then, revived by the cool night air of the mountains, rising and staggering on again. The sun rose and looked hotly down upon him as he dragged himself along, hatless, haggard, his skin burned to a blister, his eyes red and his swollen, blackened tongue hanging from his mouth.
After a time he caught sight of a clump of green trees with something shining behind them, which he thought was the water he was looking for—water, for which every boiling drop of blood in his body was fiercely calling; water, which his blistering throat and tongue must have; water, for which the very marrow of his bones cried out—water—water—and he ran with all the speed his frenzied longing could force into his legs. Presently he could hear the rustle of green leaves, and he thought it was the purring of wavelets on the bank, the white, shining bank that beckoned him on. He put out his hands to plunge into the cool, bright waves. They struck a blank, white hall, and he fell unconscious beside the doorway of Emerson Mead’s ranch house.
CHAPTER XV
Three horsemen galloped around the curve in the road that half circled the house and the corral and the stables at Emerson Mead’s ranch. One of them swung his hat and shouted a loud “Whoo-oo-oo-ee!” But there was no response from the house. Doors and windows were closed and not a soul appeared in sight.
“That’s queer,” said Tuttle. “What’s become of Billy Haney?”