After his work and meal were finished, and sunset was coloring the sky, Adam wandered around through the willows and along the stream. He stood for some time looking down upon the sandy bar where he had stumbled in pursuit of the rattlesnake and it had bitten him in the face. And then he went from one familiar place to another, sitting at last in the twilight, under the palms where Oella had nursed and fed him back to life and strength. Where was she now—that tranquil, somber-eyed Indian maiden who had refused to wed one of her race and who had died of a broken heart? The twilight seemed prophetic, the rustling palms seemed whispering. Both sadness and pleasure mingled in Adam’s return.
But the nameless something, the vague assurance of content, the end of that restless, strange sense of hurrying onward still to seek, to find—these feelings seemed about to come to him, yet held tantalizingly aloof. To-morrow surely! He was tired with his long travel, and it would take a little time once more to adjust himself to loneliness. The perfect peace of loneliness had not yet come back to him. His mind was too full to attend to the seeing, listening, feeling that constituted harmony with the desert. Yet something was beginning to come between remembrances of the immediate past and the insistent premonitions of the present. When he lay down in his blankets to hear the low rustle of the wind in the palms and to see the haunting stars, it was to realize that they were the same as always, but that he himself had changed.
* * * * *
Next day he climbed to the heights where he had learned to hunt mountain sheep, where he had learned the watching, listening, primitive joy of the Indian. He thrilled in the climb, he breathed deep of the keen, cold wind, he gazed afar with piercing eyes. Hours, like those of a lonely eagle on a crag, Adam spent there, and he wooed back to him the watching, listening power with its reward of sweet, wild elation. But as the westering sun sent him down the mountain, he felt a vague regret. The indefinable something eluded him.
* * * * *
In the dusk Adam walked along the rim of the slope above the oasis. He had watched the sunset fade over the desert, and the shading of twilight, and the gathering of dusk.
He wondered what it would mean to him now to be lost without water or food down there in the wasteland. Would panic seize him? He imagined it would be only as long as he was not sure of death. When he realized that, he would find strength and peace to meet his doom. But what agony to look up at the starlit heaven and breathe farewell to beautiful life, to the strong, sweet wine of nature, to the memory of love!
To die alone down there? Ah! Why did his thoughts turn to death? To lie down on the sand and the sage of the desert, in the dead darkness of night, would be terrible. Yet, would it really be? Would not something come to his soul? A strong man’s farewell to life, out there on the lonesome desert, would be elemental and natural. But the hour of facing death—how sad, lonely, tragic! Yet it had been bravely met by countless men over all the desolate deserts of the dreary world. All men did not feel alike. Perhaps the strongest, bravest, calmest, would suffer the least. Still, it was Adam’s conviction that to look up at the indifferent heavens and to send a hopeless cry out across the desert, realizing the end, remembering with anguish the faces of loved ones, would indeed be a bursting of the heart.
Life was so short. Hope and love so futile! Home and family—ah! a brother—should be treasured, and lived for with all the power of blood and mind. Friends should be precious. It was realization that a man needed.
A crescent beautiful moon soared up over the dark bulk of the mountain. Adam paced to and fro in a sandy glade of the oasis. All the immensity of desert and infinity of sky seemed to be at work to overwhelm him. The stars—so white, wonderful, watching, eyes of heaven, remorseless and wise! Not a sigh of wind stirred under the palms, not a quiver of a leaf. Nature seemed so strange, beautiful, waiting. All waited! Was it for him? The shadows on the white sand wrote Adam’s story of wild youth and crime and flight and agony and passion and love. How sad the low chirp of insects! Adam paced there a long time, thinking thoughts he never had before, feeling things he never felt before—realizing the brevity of life, the soul of sorrow, the truth of nature, the sweetness of women, the glory of children, the happiness of work and home.