But twenty-four hours in the desert exact their price; and that price is in measure of water. The Doc did not drink water so long as his store of contraband liquor held out; but the Papago did. Great was the Doc’s rage and disgust when his companion called him away from sinking a prospect shaft to point the single remaining water container, now much lighter than it should be. He tested the little car’s radiator to find that evaporation had left almost none of the necessary fluid therein. No use buckin’ fate; if he wanted to get back to the village of the Sand People on four wheels he’d have to give the radiator a drink and that would leave none for himself and the Papago.
It was near noon of their second day at the treasure site when the Doc whipped his reluctance into acceptance of the inevitable. He made certain preparations. First he copied into a prescription book the inscription on the bell; that would do to convince somebody whose financing of the excavation operations might have to be invoked. Then he sketched a map of the vicinity with meticulous care, marking in the jagged spurs of the nearby mountains for bearing points and indicating the position of the bell in reference to a dry wash which was traced down from a gash in the mountain wall.
“Guadalupe, old son, your old friend Stooder’s goin’ rustle back here with an outfit right soon an’ dig himself right down to them pearls. So he’s just a mite p’ticular about this map.”
Access of caution prompted the Doc to dismount from the car after he’d set the engine to humming. He ran back with a shovel and covered the bell with sand; the haggled bush above it would be a sufficient guide for him and no significant landmark for the possible prying stranger. The beam he hid in the wash. Then they trundled down their own track and back to the Road of the Dead Men. Doc Stooder cursed the necessity of automobiles leaving tracks. Some snoozer amblin’ along the main road would just’s like as not turn out to follow these two lines out into nowhere to see what he could see. Then perhaps—
Summer had come miraculously to the desert overnight, as the seasons in Altar have a way of doing. Yesterday the pink convolvulus of spring lay in scattered coral patches amid the scrub and the greasewood was showing its midget spots of yellow. Now every glistening clump of cholla was aglow with the blood-red flowers of its kind; the occasional pillars of the giant cactus were wreathed each at its top by fillets of creamy blossoms—grotesque masquerading of these withered old men of the wastes. First hint of summer’s heat was abroad. It came from the west on puffy little winds like the back-draught from an oil-burning boiler.
The Doc found himself in a frolicsome mood, for his night’s potations, predicated on a dwindling supply, had recklessly drained that supply but availed to carry him over to another day with the stars of his dream world still burning. Hunched low in his seat so that the tip of his goatee waggled against the rim of the wheel, with his flopping black hat all grease streaked pulled low against the sun glare, the tramp physician chewed tobacco with all the unction of a care-free conscience and indulged himself in wandering monologue. Guadalupe’s meagre stock of Spanish made him anything but a lively conversationalist, so the Doc was constrained to carry on a vivid conversation with himself.
Into what penetralia of reminiscence this auto-dialogue carried him! Back through the years—through countless dim valleys of a Never-Never Land of alcoholic fantasies where his spirit had been wont to pitch its tent. Scraps of jest and shreds of song stirred the ghosts along the Road of the Dead Men.
No such exuberance from Guadalupe, slave of the desert. They had not been an hour on the road when the Papago began to feel a crawling of the nerves along the spine and the pressure of invisible fingers across the brow—evil signs! No less than the mountain sheep or the road-runner in the scrub could the Papago interpret the desert’s forerunners of portent. A feel in the air—hue of the mountain rims—colour of sunlight against a rock: these things had their meaning.
Away off to the northward where a patch of gypsum showed white as film ice the Indian’s eye caught the first tangible evidence of trouble ahead. A dust whirlwind like a gigantic leg in baggy trousers was wavering across the flats; the thing possessed volition of its own so surely did it map its course across a five-mile span in less than five minutes. Guadalupe nudged his companion timidly and pointed to it.