“I found the tarantula almost eaten up by a lot of tiny wasps, as much like worms as wasps! Then I understood. That tarantula wasp had killed the tarantula, laid her eggs inside his body, tumbled him into his grave, and covered him over. By and by those eggs hatched, and the little wasps ate the tarantula—lived and grew, and after a while came out full-fledged tarantula wasps like their mother.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Time passed. The days slipped by to make weeks, and weeks merged into months. Summer with its hot midday hours, when man and beast rested or slept, seemed to shorten its season by half. No human creature ever entered a desert oasis without joy, nor left it without regret. As time went fleeting by Adam now and then remembered Dismukes, and these memories were full of both gladness and pathos. He tried to visualize the old prospector in the new role of traveler, absorber of life, spendthrift, and idler. Nevertheless, Adam could never be sure in his heart that Dismukes would find what he sought.
But for the most part of the still, hot, waking hours, Adam, when he was not working or sleeping, devoted himself to Genie. The girl changed every day—how, he was unable to tell. Most wondrous of all in nature was human life, and beyond all sublimity was the human soul!
Every morning at sunrise Genie knelt by her mother’s grave with bowed head and clasped hands, and every evening at sunset or in the golden dusk of twilight she again knelt in prayer.
“Genie, why do you kneel there—now?” asked Adam once, unable to contain his curiosity. “You did not use to do it. Only the last few weeks or month.”
“I forgot I’d promised mother,” she replied. “Besides, could I pray when I wanted to die?”
“No, I suppose not. It would be hard,” replied Adam, gravely. “Please don’t think me curious. Tell me, Genie, what do you pray for?”
“I used to pray, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ as mother taught me when I was little. But now I make up my own prayers. I ask God to keep the souls of mother and father in heaven. I pray I may be good and happy, so when they look down and see me they will be glad. I pray for you, and then for every one in the world.”