She hesitated, giving Adam the impression that she wished to have him think her husband irrational, but could not truthfully say so.
“Men do strange things in the desert,” said Adam. “May I ask, ma’am, have you food and water?”
“Yes. We’ve plenty. But Elliot makes me cook—and I never learned how. So we’ve fared poorly. But he eats little and I less!”
“Will you tell me how he came to build your hut here where, sooner or later, it’ll be crushed by rolling stones?”
A tragic shadow darkened in the large, dark-blue eyes that Adam now realized were singularly beautiful.
“I—He— This place was near the water. He cut the brush here—he didn’t see—wouldn’t believe the danger,” she faltered. She was telling a lie, and did not do it well. The fine, sensitive, delicate lips, curved and soft, sad with pain, had not been fashioned for falsehood.
“Perhaps I can make him see,” replied Adam. “I’ll go find him. Probably he’s lost. The heat is not strong enough to be dangerous. And he’s not been gone long. Don’t worry. My camp is just below. I’ll fetch him back to-day—or to-morrow at farthest.”
She murmured some incoherent thanks. Adam was again aware of her penetrating glance, staring, wondering even in her trouble. He strode away with bowed head, searching the sand for the man’s tracks. Presently he struck them and saw that they led down toward the valley.
To follow such a plain trail was child’s play for Adam’s desert sight, that had received its early training in the preservation of his life. He who had trailed lizards to their holes, and snakes to their rocks, to find them and eat or die—he was as keen as a wolf on the scent. This man’s trail led straight down to the open valley, out along the western bulge of slope, to a dry water hole.
From there the footprints led down to the parapet of a wide bench, under which the white crust began its level monotony toward the other side of the valley. Different here was it from the place miles below where Adam had crossed. It was lower—the bottom of the bowl. Adam found difficulty in breathing, and had sensations like intermittent rushes of blood to his head. The leaden air weighed down, and, though his keen scent could not detect any odor, he knew there was impurity of some kind on the slow wind. It reminded him that this was Death Valley. He considered a moment. If the man’s tracks went on across the valley, Adam would return to camp for a canteen, then take up the trail again. But the tracks led off westward once more, straggling and aimless. Adam’s stride made three of one of these steps. He did not care about the heat. That faint hint of gas, however, caused him concern. For miles he followed the straggling tracks, westward to a heave of valley slope that, according to the map of Dismukes, separated Death Valley from its mate adjoining—Lost Valley. On the left of this ridge the tracks wandered up the slope to the base of the mountain and followed it in wide scallops. The footmarks now showed the dragging of boots, and little by little they appeared fresher in the sand. This wanderer had not rested during the night.