Roger rushed around the table and seized Ernest by the throat. "Now I'm going to kill you," he said between his teeth.
Dick, shouting for Gustav, fought to break Roger's hold. Gustav came rushing over the porch.
When Roger next was fully conscious of himself he was climbing from the desert up onto a broad mesa. The sun was sinking behind the mountains into which the mesa merged. When he reached the crest of the mesa, Roger paused, shaken and breathless. There was the scramble of little footsteps behind him and Roger turned to look. Peter, packless and breathing hard, was following him. Roger drew his shirt sleeves across his eyes. He knew that Gustav and Dick had pulled him away from Ernest. How much he had injured Ernest he did not know, nor, for the present, did he care. He recalled that, with Ernest motionless on the floor, the others had united in denouncing him, that Charley had turned on him with furious eyes. Then he had fled. Not toward Archer's Springs where he was known. But with a vague idea of crossing the Colorado into California, he had turned westward.
He was fleeing not from fear nor from cowardice. He was fleeing because with the discovery of Ernest's duplicity, the entire edifice of his life had tumbled into ruins. A great loathing of the desert, of the work he had attempted there, but most of all, a red hate for Ernest, carried him across the many burning miles of desert to the foothills of the River Range. A blind desire to get away from it all, to lose himself forever, to forget all that he had ever been or known, but above everything to get away from Ernest was for the time being the motive force of his existence.
He was carrying a bag of grub and his two gallon canteen which still was heavy with water. For a moment Roger considered some method of transferring his burden to the burro's little back. But Peter was so small, so winded, that he gave up the idea and trudged on to the west. Peter fell in after him and two scarcely discernible specks on the immense floor of the mesa they moved toward the black mountain top lifting before them. There was no sound save that of their own footsteps. There was no verdure here except the martial figures of the great cacti, those soldiers of the waste, that guard the eternal solitudes. There was no wind. Only a breathless sense of brooding in the remote wonder of the sky. The desert is a hard country; a country to try out the mettle of a man and leave it all dross or pure gold.
It was starlight when Roger and Peter reached the top of the range. Beyond dimly lay another range.
Roger resolved to camp for the night in the valley below. Peter was reluctant to go farther. In fact for the last hour, Roger had been obliged to lead him. The way down was very precipitous and they had not covered a third of it when Roger slipped and fell. He did not lose his grip on the lead rope and at the sudden jerk the little burro pitched forward after Roger. But Peter got his balance immediately and threw himself back on his shoulders, bracing his feet against the roots of a giant cactus and stood fast.
Roger dangled helplessly over a black drop for a few seconds, then with the aid of the lead rope he crawled up to the root of another cactus where he lay for a moment. Then he started on downward, zig-zagging carefully this time as one should descend a trailless mountain.
Roger slept fitfully in the sand at the bottom of the valley, waking and rising at the first peep of dawn. Peter had fared rather well. There were grass tufts growing at the roots of the great cacti, around about. Roger ate a cold breakfast. He found a rough hollow in a rock, where he gave Peter a small drink of water, then he started on. But, although he cursed the little burro roundly, Peter again was reluctant to move westward, and Roger had again to take hold of the lead rope.
All day long, he continued the march westward. This range was like the Coyote Range, though there were more passes through the ridges, so that had he been able to find a trail, he could have moved rapidly. But the way underfoot was inconceivably rough and by noon Roger's shoes were cut and his feet bruised and bleeding. But he never for a moment considered turning back. He was through—through with the old work which had brought him only disappointment, through with the old affections which had only played him false. Even Peter who had come with him voluntarily was now trying to turn back.