“Yes. It’s my husband. It’s Virey. He found out the rolling rocks frightened me at night. So he climbs up there and rolls them.... Sees how close he can come to hitting the shack!... Oh, he’s done that often!”
An instant Adam leaned there with his head bent to the brush wall, as if turned to stone. Then like a man stung he leaped up and bounded round the shack toward the slope.
In the orange radiance on that strange, moon-blanched slope he dimly saw a moving object. It stood upright. Indeed, no burro or panther! Adam drew a deep and mighty breath for the yell that must jar the very stones from their sockets.
“Hyar!” he yelled in stentorian roar. Like thunder the great sound pealed up the slope. “Come down or I’ll wring your neck!”
Only the clapping, rolling, immeasurable echoes answered him. The last hollow clap and roll died away, leaving the silence deader than before.
* * * * *
Adam spent the remainder of that night pacing to and fro in the orange-hued shadows, fighting the fierce, grim violence that at last had burst its barrier. Adam could have wrung the life out of this Virey with less compunction than he would have in stamping on the head of a venomous reptile. Yet it was as if a spirit kept in the shadow of his form, as he strode the bare shingle, gazing up at the solemn black mountains and at the wan stars.
Adam went down to the gateway between the huge walls. A light was kindling over the far-away Funeral range, and soon a glorious star swept up, as if by magic, above the dark rim of the world. The morning star shining down into Death Valley! No dream—no illusion—no desert mirage! Like the Star of Bethlehem beckoning the Wise Men to the East, it seemed to blaze a radiant path for Adam down across the valley of dim, mystic shadows. What could be the meaning of such a wonderful light? Was that blue-white lilac-haloed star only another earth upon which the sun was shining? Adam lifted his drawn face to its light and wrestled with the baser side of his nature. He seemed to be dominated by the spirit that kept close to his side. Magdalene Virey kept vigil with him on that lonely beat. It was her agony which swayed and wore down his elemental passion. Would not he fail her if he killed this man? Virey’s brutality seemed not the great question at issue for him.
“I’ll not kill him—yet!”
Thus Adam eased the terrible contention within him.