“Good by,” returned Adam, unable to say more.
With a whoop at the four burros and a slap on the haunch of one of them, Dismukes started them southward. They trotted ahead with packs bobbing and wagging. What giant strides Dismukes took! He seemed the incarnation of dogged strength of manhood, yet something ludicrous clung about him in his powerful action as well as in his immense squat form. He did not look back.
Adam slapped Jinny on the haunch and started her westward.
The hour was still early morning. A rosy freshness of the sunrise still slanted along the bronze slopes of the range and here and there blossoms of ocatilla shone red. The desert appeared to be a gently rising floor of gravel, sparsely decked with ironwood and mesquite, and an occasional cactus, that, so far as Adam could see, did not harbor a living creature. The day did not seem to feel hot, but Adam knew from the rising heat veils that it was hot. Excitement governed his feelings. Actually he was on the move, with an outfit and every hope to escape possible pursuers, with the absolute surety of a hard yet wonderful existence staring him in the face.
Not until he felt a drag in his steps did he think of his weakened condition. Resting awhile in the shade of a tree, he let the burro graze on the scant brush, and then went on again. Thus he traveled on, with frequent rests, until the heat made it imperative for him to halt till afternoon. About the middle of the afternoon he packed and set forth again.
A direct line westward appeared to be bringing him closer to the slope of the mountain; and it was not long before he saw a thick patch of green brush that surely indicated a water hole. The very sight seemed to invigorate him. Nevertheless, the promised oasis was far away, and not before he had walked till he was weary and rested many times did he reach it. To find water and grass was like making a thrilling discovery. Adam unpacked Jinny and turned her loose, not, however, without some misgivings as to her staying there.
Though he suffered from an extreme fatigue and a weakness that seemed to be in both muscle and bone, a kind of cheer came to him with the camp-fire duties. Never had he been so famished! The sun set while he ate, and, despite his hunger, more than once he had to stop to gaze down across the measureless slope, smoky and red, that ended in purple obscurity. It struck him suddenly, as he was putting some sticks of dead ironwood on the fire, how he had ceased to look back over his shoulder toward the south. The fire sputtered, the twilight deepened, the silence grew vast and vague. His eyelids were as heavy as lead, and all the nerves and veins of his body seemed to run together and to sink into an abyss the restfulness of which was unutterably sweet.
Some time during Adam’s slumbers a nightmare possessed him. At the moment he was about to be captured he awakened, cold with clammy sweat and shaking in every limb. With violent start of consciousness, with fearful uncertainty, he raised himself to peer around. The desert night encompassed him. It was late, somewhere near the morning hour. Low down over the dark horizon line hung a wan distorted moon that shone with weird luster. Adam saw the black mountain wall above him apparently lifting to the stars, and the thick shadow of gloom filling the mouth of the canyon where he lay. He listened. And then he breathed a long sigh of relief and lay back in his blankets. The silence was that of a grave. There were no pursuers. He had only dreamed. And he closed his eyes again, feeling some blessed safeguard in the fact of his loneliness.
Dawn roused him to his tasks, stronger physically, eager and keen, but more watchful than he had been the preceding day and with less thrill than he had felt. He packed in half an hour and was traveling west when the sun rose. Gradually with the return of his habit of watchfulness came his former instinctive tendency to look back over his shoulder. He continually drove this away and it continually returned. The only sure banishment of it came through action, with its attendant exercise of his faculties. Therefore he rested less and walked more, taxing his strength to its utmost that morning, until the hot noon hour forced him to halt. Then while Jinny nibbled at the bitter desert plants Adam dozed in the thin shade of a mesquite. Close by grew a large ocatilla cactus covered with red flowers among which bees hummed. Adam never completely lost sense of this melodious hum, and it seemed to be trying to revive memories that he shunned.
The sun was still high and hot when Adam resumed travel, but it was westering and the slanting rays were bearable. After he got thoroughly warmed up and sweating freely he did not mind the heat, and was able to drive Jinny and keep up a strong stride for an hour at a time. His course now led along the base of the mountain wall, and that long low ridge which marked his destination began to seem less unattainable. The afternoon waned, the sun sank, the heat declined, and Jinny began to show signs of weariness. It bothered Adam to keep her headed straight. He searched the line where desert slope met the mountain wall for another green thicket of brush marking a water hole, but he could not see one. Darkness overtook him and he was compelled to make dry camp. This occasioned him some uneasiness, not that he did not have plenty of water for himself, but because he worried about the burro and the possibility of not finding water the next day. Nevertheless, he slept soundly.