But it was not one o'clock when the Secretary awoke. The train was rumbling slowly, and he looked from the window. Only the moonlit flats of the desert were to be seen. Enoch rose with sudden energy and dressed himself. He chucked his toilet case, with his diary and a change of underwear, into a satchel, and scrawled a note to Abbott:
"Dear Charley: I'm slipping off into the desert for a little rest. You'll hear from me when I feel better. Give out that I'm sick—I am—and cancel the few speaking engagements left. Tell Jonas he is not to worry. Yours, E. H."
He sealed this note, then he pulled on a soft hat and, as the train stopped at a water tank, he slipped off the platform and stood in the shadow of an old shed. It seemed to him a long time before the engine, with violent puffing and jolting, started the long train on again. But finally the tail lights disappeared in the distance and Enoch was alone in the desert. For a few moments he stood beside the track, drawing in deep breaths of the warm night air. Then he started slowly westward along the railway tracks. He had noted a cluster of adobe houses a mile or so back, and toward these he was headed. In spite of the agony of the blow he had sustained Enoch, gazing from the silver flood of the desert, to the silver arch of the heavens, was conscious of a thrill of excitement and not unpleasant anticipation. Somewhere, somehow, in the desert, he would find peace and sufficient spiritual strength to sustain him when once more he faced Washington and the world.
BOOK III
THE ENCHANTED CANYON
CHAPTER VII
THE DESERT
"If I had a son, I would teach him obedience as heaven's first law, for so only can a man be trained to obey his own better self."—Enoch's Diary.
The Secretary had no intention of waking the strange little village at night. He thought that, once he had relocated it, he would wait until dawn before rousing any one. But he had not counted on the village dogs. These set up such an outcry that, while Enoch leaned quietly against a rude corral fence waiting for the hullaballoo to cease, the door of the house nearest opened, and a man came out. He stood for a moment very deliberately staring at the Secretary, whose polite "Good morning" could not be heard above the dogs' uproar.
Enoch, with a half grin, dropped his satchel and held up both hands. The man, half smiling in response, kicked and cursed the dogs into silence. Then he approached Enoch. He was a small, swarthy chap, clad in overalls and an undershirt.