The tracks grew deeper, more dragging, wavering from side to side. Here the man had fallen. Adam saw the imprints of his hands and a smooth furrow where evidently he had dragged a canteen across the sand. Then came the telltale signs of where he had again fallen and had begun to crawl.
“Looks like the old story,” muttered Adam. “I’ll just about find him dying or dead.... Better so—for that woman who called him husband!... I wonder—I wonder.”
Adam’s year of wandering had led him far from the haunts of men, along the lonely desert trails and roads where only a few solitary humans like himself dared the elements, or herded in sordid and hard camps; but, nevertheless, by some virtue growing out of his strife and adversity, he had come to sense something nameless, to feel the mighty beat of the heart of the desert, to hear a mourning music over the silent wastes—a still, sad music of humanity. It was there, even in the gray wastelands.
He strode on with contracted eyes, peering through the hot sunlight. At last he espied a moving object. A huge land turtle toiling along! No, it was a man crawling on hands and knees.
CHAPTER XV
Adam ran with the strides of a giant. And he came up to a man, ragged and dirty, crawling wearily along, dragging a canteen through the sand.
“Say, hold on!” called Adam, loudly.
The man halted, but did not lift his head. Adam bent down to peer at him.
“What ails you?” queried Adam, sharply.