“Yes, my friend. Life is strange on the desert,” replied Adam. “And now unpack your burros. Make camp with me here. We’ll eat and talk together.”
A sunset, rare on the Mohave, glowed over the simple camp tasks of these men who in their wanderings had met again. Clouds hung along the mountain tops, colored into deeper glory as the sun sank. The dark purples had an edge of silver, and the fleecy whites turned to pink and rose, while golden rays shot up from behind the red-hazed peaks. Over the valley fell a beautiful and transparent light, blending and deepening until a shadow as blue as the sea lay on Tecopah.
While the men ate their frugal repast they talked, each gradually growing used to a situation that broke the desert habit of silence. There was an unconscious deference of each man toward the other—Wansfell seeing in Dismukes the savior of his life and a teacher who had inspired him to scale the heights of human toil and strife; Dismukes finding in Wansfell a development of his idea, the divine spirit of man rising above the great primal beasts of the desert, self-preservation and ferocity.
“Wansfell, have you kept track of time?” asked Dismukes, reflectively, as he got out a black, stumpy pipe that Adam remembered.
“No. Days and weeks glide into years—that’s all I can keep track of,” replied Adam.
“I never could, either. What is time on the desert? Nothin’.... Well, it flies, that’s sure. An’ it must be years since I met you first down there in the Colorado. Let’s see. Three times I went to Yuma—once to Riverside—an’ twice to San Diego. Six trips inside. That’s all I’ve made to bank my money since I met you. Six years. But, say, I missed a year or so.”
“Dismukes, I’ve seen the snows white on the peaks eight times. Eight years, my friend, since Jinny cocked her ears that day and saved me. How little a thing life is in the desert!”
“Eight years!” echoed Dismukes, and wagged his huge shaggy head. “It can’t be.... Well, well, time slips away.... Wansfell, you’re a young man, though I see gray over your temples. And you can’t have any more fear because of that—that crime you confessed to me. Lord! man, no one would ever know you as that boy!”
“No fear that way any more. But fear of myself, Dismukes. If I went back to the haunts of men I would forget.”
“Ah yes, yes!” sighed Dismukes. “I understand. I wonder how it’ll be with me when my hour comes to leave the desert. I wonder.”