The high outline of a sand ridge loomed suddenly before them. It was an elevation which had built itself up year after year, by reason of its resistant creosote bush and other tenacious growth. It was halting the rushing flood of sand, banking it back against the terrific current. They were swept toward it. Its base seemed swelling, crawling to meet them, and its outline was mounting higher and higher. They were driven up with the piling earth. The thundering volume frayed at them, pressed the breath from their lungs, tumbled them, carried them with it. A mountain was being formed. They shot across its summit and dropped as though from a cloud. They slid and rolled and lodged under the lee of the ridge.
His face bleeding, his hands shaking, the ragged, short man stepped backward from the creeping pile and laughed. The sound made the other jump and whirl around on him. It was a sharp, strained cackle—a mad expression of release from the immediate clutches of death.
The man's pasty face was pale green and drawn into lines of pain. He cursed the laughter.
"Laugh when we get outa this," he snapped, "er that damn Chink'll get us yet." He made a threatening step toward the shorter one.
"Yer scared yer goin' t' croak, ain'tcha?" he snarled. "Yuh wanna see me croak first, don'tcha? Well, don'tcha try t' start nothin' with me! I'm uh live man yet, by God!"
The smaller man stepped backward again. The sand sucked in around his shoe-tops. He stood still a moment, and then a curious, pained, questioning look came into his face. He advanced a step, hastily, and whirled about. Looking down at the spot where he had stood, he saw two black-spotted coils, one above the other, partly buried, and a flat, fanged head protruding from the sand. He had felt three sharp stings in his half-deadened leg, before he had moved.
Almost forgotten by the battered twain, the harmless Yuen Ming Chu had also observed the mottled coils and the venomous puffed head of the diamond rattler.
On recognizing what had befallen him, the stricken man's screech mounted to the whistling roar overhead.
"Wot'sa matter? Bit—hey?" interrogated the Squint.
"I'm croakin': now I'm croakin' sure!" gasped Shorty.