CHAPTER II
At the end of an hour he was still wondering.
At midday the canyon was chill and dank, lit only by a half light which at times dwindled to a deep dusk as the rock walls beetled together hundreds of feet above his head. Always when he stumbled through one of the darkest 374 passages, he heard and half saw immense gray bats flapping above him. In the half-lit reaches, he hardly took a step without seeing great rats with gray coats, yellow teeth, and evil pink eyes. But rats and bats combined were not as bad as the snakes. They were almost white, and nowhere had he seen rattlers of such size. If his caution relaxed for a second, they struck at him with fangs as long and sharp as needles.
The tortured, twisted cedars, the paloverdi, occatilla, cholla, opunti, through which he edged his laborious way, all offered an almost animate, armed hostility.
Altogether this journey was the least sweet he had taken anywhere. Yet he went on.
Why had eleven Mexican bandits refused to advance even to within decent rifle range of the canyon’s mouth? What was there about the putrid yet gorgeous perfume that had made the stallion go off his nut, so to speak?
After a time, Kirby veered away from a fourteen-foot rattler which flashed in a loathsome coil on his left hand. Hungry, weakened by all he had been through since breakfast time, he plodded doggedly on.
But a moment later he stumbled past a twisted cedar, and then stopped, forgetting even the snakes.
At his feet lay the bleached skeleton of a man.