And on the back trail where the bell of the Lost Mission had been found; over that site which the Doc had so carefully mapped and measured the wind scoured and builded—scoured and builded. Obliterating, changing, re-creating.
[CHAPTER XIX]
THIRST
The sun went down before the sand storm abated. Two men, the one called civilized, the other a savage, crouched like rabbits in a covert beneath the body of the little car with a high sand drift piled up to windward even over the radiator top. Two mites in the wind-scourged wilderness of Altar with love o’ life the leveller that made them kin.
When the last vagrant wind fury had passed fell silence almost terrific by contrast with the uproar of the storm. In place of the slithering and whistling of driven sand an oppressive stillness, which seemed dropped from the void of the stars, now showing. Occasionally the dry rustle of sand dropping in rivulets from some desert bush lifting its head after the scourging; that was all.
When the two crawled out from beneath their shelter Guadalupe was for an immediate start afoot in the direction of the faint pencilings of red marking the west. But Doc Stooder possessed an abiding glimmer of faith in the soundness of the car and insisted on taking stock of its motive possibilities. A cursory examination convinced him of the hopelessness of his trust, for the sand was heaped entirely over the unprotected engine—desert cars dispense with a hood because it blankets the engine’s heat—and he knew that even with water in the radiator he couldn’t get a kick out of the thing before a thorough overhauling. This was out of the question. They must achieve their escape from the desert’s trap afoot.
The Papago started on a swinging walk a little north of west, the Doc following. They had not gone far when the white man discovered they were not following the road; each step was through loose sand which received the foot with a viscous hold and reluctantly released it. The Doc snarled a query at his companion: why in the name of deletion had he quit the Road of the Dead Men?
“Not quit—finding him,” came Guadalupe’s grudging answer. Then Stooder admitted to himself the possibility that during the time the little car had pushed on into the storm he had tooled it off the road. How far he had driven away from the single track which spans Altar he could not hazard a guess. Anyway, he knew one thing: he was dog tired, and if this mangy black coyote thought A. Stooder, M.D., was going to wallow through sand all night without a sleep he had another think coming.
Reaction from the excitements of the past two days added extra weight to the Doc’s already none-too-light handicap of alcoholic repercussions. The storm had torn his nerves to tatters; his mouth was as dry as an old church pew cushion; each of his legs felt as if they were dragging an Oregon boot. Stooder’s mind was too dulled to probe down below these afflictions and read the real seriousness of his situation; it dealt only with cogent aches and reluctances.