“Well, let's—let's be moving along—somewhere.”
“WHERE, I'd like to know? What's the good of moving on?”
“What's the good of stopping here?”
There was a silence.
“Lord, it's hot,” said the dentist, finally, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Marcus ground his teeth.
“Done for,” he muttered; “done for.”
“I never WAS so thirsty,” continued McTeague. “I'm that dry I can hear my tongue rubbing against the roof of my mouth.”
“Well, we can't stop here,” said Marcus, finally; “we got to go somewhere. We'll try and get back, but it ain't no manner of use. Anything we want to take along with us from the mule? We can——”
Suddenly he paused. In an instant the eyes of the two doomed men had met as the same thought simultaneously rose in their minds. The canvas sack with its five thousand dollars was still tied to the horn of the saddle.
Marcus had emptied his revolver at the mule, and though he still wore his cartridge belt, he was for the moment as unarmed as McTeague.