CHAPTER XXII
THE TRAIL OF ONE
Fear and hate and love eats up the miles even as the sun eats up the white mist of the morning. But the distance that was between the two men neither increased nor diminished; it became terribly hot, and the going was arduous. Tough, spiky bushes covered the plain to the height of a man’s knee but they seemed less to grow out of the deep, shifting dust, than to be stuck into it.
The progress the men made was rather by a succession of leaps than by straight running. It was like trying to make speed over an unequal beach covered with knee-deep water, and it told upon them fearfully.
A hot wind was blowing with fierce gusts. Sometimes it sent spinning columns of dust high into the air, and with the same breath destroyed them and hurled the dust fragments into the faces of the men. Now and again, above the gusting of the wind, the pulseless, clicking, singing signals of rattle snakes could be heard.
As the day advanced, black clouds shot with lightning began to bank up in the West, and thunder no louder than the purring of a cat made itself heard. And still the men staggered on, but their speed now was no more than that of a fast walk.
Their throats and the roofs of their mouths were as if calcined by fire; their eyes were red, burnt and dry. And those two valiant feet of Sunrise, Hate and Love, began to doubt each other. “It may be,” they said, “that Fear is stronger than we.” But they went on, bleeding and bruised. And it was not otherwise with the feet of Fear. “We are done for,” they said. But they went on.
And now the black, thunder-bearing clouds, rushing up from the west, came between the sun and the plain, darkened the bushes and the dust and the figures of the men. But the heat did not diminish. And the men crept on.
Between them the distance was now no more than the half of a mile. Their pace had become that of children learning to walk. But of the two children Sunrise was the more advanced in walking. And the world grew darker, the wind began to howl, and a continuous cloud of stinging dust smote into their faces.