It was a close call in Sageville that Radway’d get forgiven in spite of himself. He actually rode out one end of the town with his new partner as Billsky came in at the other.
The fellows laughed at Billsky; but they liked him; and maybe they began to wonder. Anyway, Billsky stayed in Sageville a week, selling his pony and getting an outfit together. When they asked him what he wanted a prospectin’ outfit for, he just looked at them in a surprised, hurt sort of way, and said, “Why, to go after Rad and forgive him, of course. What’d you think?” Pretty soon, they stopped laughing. It was the look on Billsky’s face stopped them. You know how queer brown and yellow faces look to us? That’s because the expression never changes. Billsky began to look queer, like a Chink or an Indian; he’d just one expression in those days, stamped on his hairy face as if he’d been branded with it.
He got two burros and an outfit of sorts, and off he went at the end of the week, trailing Radway into the Altanero. Three days before he went, a mule wagon pulled out for Seear; it overtook Radway and his partner, and the driver told him his forgiver was following on. So, you see, Rad knew.
Have you ever seen the opening of the Altanero: the Gates of the Altanero? There’s desert, and there’s hills, and there’s cañons; and there’s the Altanero. This side the Gates, you’re still somebody, with work to do, and money to get, and girls to kiss: anything, if you go find it. Other side the Gates, you’re nobody, nothing. You just go out. Yes, you just go out. It’s like dying while you’re alive. You don’t count at all; and quite often you die dead.
Have you ever seen the Gates? You go on and on in the heat, away from Sageville, and Seear, and everything you know. They lie flat behind you, lost in the heat. You don’t see ’em if you turn and look. You don’t see anything. Even the sage thins out and goes. It’s all dust. Then ahead, ever so far, you see something gold. It rises higher, little by little,—oh so slow! and you see it’s rocks, great golden rocks. They lift, and lift, and lift. One day you find they’re behind you as well as in front: nothing but golden rocks; unless it’s red rocks or green rocks or rocks like clear black glass. I’ve known some queer moments, but there’s nothing so queer as when it first comes home to you that, for miles and miles in every direction, there’s just nothing but the rocks—like a world rough-cut from precious stones and left to die.
There’s few wells in the Altanero: few that are known. You travel by, and accordin’ to, the wells. Radway struck off into the hills from the Seaar trail, making for the first well. A week later, there was Billsky following over the same ground. Each night he’d camp by one of Radway’s cold fires; and, each night, he’d kneel in the ashes and pray. Sometimes he’d pray an hour, or two hours, or three, under the tremendous stars; but it was always that he might catch up with Rad quick, and forgive him, and get it off his mind. He wasn’t worrying. He was just eager. He knew he was bound to come across Rad sooner or later in the Altanero. Then he’d sleep, and eat, and off he’d go, singing hymns to the burros: “Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” most likely.
Once, in the dead ashes, he found a broke-off saucepan handle. He was so pleased he carted it along with him, like a mascot. It seemed to put him in touch with Radway: to bring the happy moment o’ forgiveness nearer.
And Radway? Well, there you have me.
The Altanero’s a bad country to travel in if you’ve anything on your nerves. I passed through a few miles of it once when I had something on mine: a sick child two hundred miles away; and I tell you, by the third day I was seein’ the kid everywhere. But Radway—I can’t just explain Radway. I wonder if he was seein’ the girl that started it.
Billsky made the first water-hole six days behind Rad; he’d gained a day.