[CHAPTER XXII]
ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL
Dawn marched over the mountains like a phalanx of Alexander: spear points of light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in solid bundles. Then the mercenaries of the sun trooped across the vacant desert floor wave on wave and strength following strength. All the dead world of Altar stirred and set itself for the ordeal of a new day.
The figure of a man that had been Doc Stooder, cynical tinker of life’s rusts and corrodings, stirred under the trampling of the light—stirred and stretched its members in dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally when the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids the man opened them and lay staring up into the sky’s opalescence. For a long minute they probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, then turned to find the rim of the iron mountains to the east. Comprehension came at last; with it a distorted memory image of hours of madness and wandering, agony of thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that carried nowhere. Sleep which had put a period to all this nightmare had also mercifully rallied the man’s nervous forces to a new effort of self-saving. Men die hard because the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious minds always prevails over surrender of the conscious will.
The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and felt something sinuous slide off his body. An instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. He dared lift his head ever so little and let his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a pallid, root-like thing the size of a man’s wrist at one end and tapering to a stringy point. He raised himself on his elbow and drew the vegetable serpent to him. Just as he did so his eyes discovered the prints of a man’s feet in the sand by where he lay.
“Glory be!” came the croak from stiffened lips, and the Doc concentrated all his scattered wits on an examination of the prodigy. Yes, footprints. They came from behind him; they were printed in a semi-circle about him to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking down at him while he slept; they marched off in line with their approach straight toward the tawny mountains ringing the northern horizon.
Guadalupe’s footprints—the trail he had followed and lost the day before! So Stooder thought.
A great sense of security pushed through the daze in his brain. Here, at last, lay the way to salvation. That thought having been duly relished, he turned his attention once more to the mysterious vegetable whip by his side. He never had seen its like. How it came to be there he had no notion. The thing was unlike any desert growth in his experienced observation, wherefore it seemed to represent some prodigy of the desert god dropped by him for a purpose.
He gripped the heavier end of the root between his hands and gave it a twist. The thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin spurt of water shot from the severed ends. Greedily he thrust one stump into his mouth and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, mildly acrid, drenched the parchment-like membranes of his throat. The Doc sighed once, then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had broken off. As the pulp was swallowed he felt immediate access of strength and sanity.
From somewhere deep in the corroded heart of him welled an emotion whose like he had not known during all the years of his warped and weathered manhood. As if a child prompted him the gaunt, half-naked creature on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing blue.