IV

There came a morning when the sun shone angry and red through a dull,

smoky haze.

"We're in for sandstorms," said Cameron.

They had scarcely covered a mile when a desert-wide, moaning, yellow

wall of flying sand swooped down upon them. Seeking shelter in the lee

of a rock, they waited, hoping the storm was only a squall, such as

frequently whipped across the open places. The moan increased to a

roar, and the dull red slowly dimmed, to disappear in the yellow pall,

and the air grew thick and dark. Warren slipped the packs from the

burros. Cameron feared the sandstorms had arrived some weeks ahead of

their usual season.

The men covered their heads and patiently waited. The long hours

dragged, and the storm increased in fury. Cameron and Warren wet

scarfs with water from their canteens, and bound them round their

faces, and then covered their heads. The steady, hollow bellow of

flying sand went on. It flew so thickly that enough sifted down under

the shelving rock to weight the blankets and almost bury the men. They

were frequently compelled to shake off the sand to keep from being

borne to the ground. And it was necessary to keep digging out the

packs. The floor of their shelter gradually rose higher and higher.

They tried to eat, and seemed to be grinding only sand between their

teeth. They lost the count of time. They dared not sleep, for that

would have meant being buried alive. The could only crouch close to the

leaning rock, shake off the sand, blindly dig out their packs, and

every moment gasp and cough and choke to fight suffocation.

The storm finally blew itself out. It left the prospectors heavy and

stupid for want of sleep. Their burros had wandered away, or had been

buried in the sand. Far as eye could reach the desert had marvelously

changed; it was now a rippling sea of sand dunes. Away to the north

rose the peak that was their only guiding mark. They headed toward it,

carrying a shovel and part of their packs.

At noon the peak vanished in the shimmering glare of the desert. The

prospectors pushed on, guided by the sun. In every wash they tried for

water. With the forked peach branch in his hands Warren always

succeeded in locating water. They dug, but it lay too deep. At

length, spent and sore, they fell and slept through that night and part

of the next day. Then they succeeded in getting water, and quenched

their thirst, and filled the canteens, and cooked a meal.

The burning day found them in an interminably wide plain, where there

was no shelter from the fierce sun. The men were exceedingly careful

with their water, though there was absolute necessity of drinking a

little every hour. Late in the afternoon they came to a canyon that

they believed was the lower end of the one in which they had last found

water. For hours they traveled toward its head, and, long after night

had set, found what they sought. Yielding to exhaustion, they slept,

and next day were loath to leave the waterhole. Cool night spurred

them on with canteens full and renewed strength.

Morning told Cameron that they had turned back miles into the desert,

and it was desert new to him. The red sun, the increasing heat, and

especially the variety and large size of the cactus plants warned

Cameron that he had descended to a lower level. Mountain peaks loomed

on all sides, some near, others distant; and one, a blue spur,

splitting the glaring sky far to the north, Cameron thought he

recognized as a landmark. The ascent toward it was heartbreaking, not

in steepness, but in its league-and-league-long monotonous rise.

Cameron knew there was only one hope--to make the water hold out and

never stop to rest. Warren began to weaken. Often he had to halt. The

burning white day passed, and likewise the night, with its white stars

shining so pitilessly cold and bright.

Cameron measured the water in his canteen by its weight. Evaporation

by heat consumed as much as he drank. During one of the rests, when he

had wetted his parched mouth and throat, he found opportunity to pour a

little water from his canteen into Warren's.

At first Cameron had curbed his restless activity to accommodate the

pace of his elder comrade. But now he felt that he was losing

something of his instinctive and passionate zeal to get out of the

desert. The thought of water came to occupy his mind. He began to

imagine that his last little store of water did not appreciably

diminish. He knew he was not quite right in his mind regarding water;

nevertheless, he felt this to be more of fact than fancy, and he began

to ponder.

When next they rested he pretended to be in a kind of stupor; but he

covertly watched Warren. The man appeared far gone, yet he had

cunning. He cautiously took up Cameron's canteen and poured water into

it from his own.

This troubled Cameron. The old irritation at not being able to thwart

Warren returned to him. Cameron reflected, and concluded that he had

been unwise not to expect this very thing. Then, as his comrade

dropped into weary rest, he lifted both canteens. If there were any

water in Warren's, it was only very little. Both men had been enduring

the terrible desert thirst, concealing it, each giving his water to the

other, and the sacrifice had been useless.

Instead of ministering to the parched throats of one or both, the water

had evaporated. When Cameron made sure of this, he took one more

drink, the last, and poured the little water left into Warren's

canteen. He threw his own away.

Soon afterward Warren discovered the loss.

"Where's your canteen?" he asked.

"The heat was getting my water, so I drank what was left."

"My son!" said Warren.

The day opened for them in a red and green hell of rock and cactus.

Like a flame the sun scorched and peeled their faces. Warren went

blind from the glare, and Cameron had to lead him. At last Warren

plunged down, exhausted, in the shade of a ledge.

Cameron rested and waited, hopeless, with hot, weary eyes gazing down

from the height where he sat. The ledge was the top step of a ragged

gigantic stairway. Below stretched a sad, austere, and lonely valley.

A dim, wide streak, lighter than the bordering gray, wound down the

valley floor. Once a river had flowed there, leaving only a forlorn

trace down the winding floor of this forlorn valley.

Movement on the part of Warren attracted Cameron's attention. Evidently

the old prospector had recovered his sight and some of his strength,

for he had arisen, and now began to walk along the arroyo bed with his

forked peach branch held before him. He had clung to the precious bit

of wood. Cameron considered the prospect for water hopeless, because

he saw that the arroyo had once been a canyon, and had been filled with

sands by desert winds. Warren, however, stopped in a deep pit, and,

cutting his canteen in half, began to use one side of it as a scoop.

He scooped out a wide hollow, so wide that Cameron was certain he had

gone crazy. Cameron gently urged him to stop, and then forcibly tried

to make him. But these efforts were futile. Warren worked with slow,

ceaseless, methodical movement. He toiled for what seemed hours.

Cameron, seeing the darkening, dampening sand, realized a wonderful

possibility of water, and he plunged into the pit with the other half

of the canteen. Then both men toiled, round and round the wide hole,

down deeper and deeper. The sand grew moist, then wet. At the bottom

of the deep pit the sand coarsened, gave place to gravel. Finally water

welled in, a stronger volume than Cameron ever remembered finding on

the desert. It would soon fill the hole and run over. He marveled at

the circumstance. The time was near the end of the dry season.

Perhaps an underground stream flowed from the range behind down to the

valley floor, and at this point came near to the surface. Cameron had

heard of such desert miracles.

The finding of water revived Cameron's flagging hopes. But they were

short-lived. Warren had spend himself utterly.

"I'm done. Don't linger," he whispered. "My son, go--go!"

Then he fell. Cameron dragged him out of the sand pit to a sheltered

place under the ledge. While sitting beside the failing man Cameron

discovered painted images on the wall. Often in the desert he had

found these evidences of a prehistoric people. Then, from long habit,

he picked up a piece of rock and examined it. Its weight made him

closely scrutinize it. The color was a peculiar black. He scraped

through the black rust to find a piece of gold. Around him lay

scattered heaps of black pebbles and bits of black, weathered rock and

pieces of broken ledge, and they showed gold.

"Warren! Look! See it! Feel it! Gold!"

But Warren had never cared, and now he was too blind to see.

"Go--go!" he whispered.

Cameron gazed down the gray reaches of the forlorn valley, and

something within him that was neither intelligence nor

emotion--something inscrutably strange--impelled him to promise.

Then Cameron built up stone monuments to mark his gold strike. That

done, he tarried beside the unconscious Warren. Moments passed--grew

into hours. Cameron still had strength left to make an effort to get

out of the desert. But that same inscrutable something which had

ordered his strange involuntary promise to Warren held him beside his

fallen comrade. He watched the white sun turn to gold, and then to red

and sink behind mountains in the west. Twilight stole into the arroyo.

It lingered, slowly turning to gloom. The vault of blue black lightened

to the blinking of stars. Then fell the serene, silent, luminous desert

night.

Cameron kept his vigil. As the long hours wore on he felt creep over

him the comforting sense that he need not forever fight sleep. A wan

glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy misshapen

moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence

claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable something

breathed to him, telling him when he was alone. He need not have

looked at the dark, still face beside him.

Another face haunted Cameron's--a woman's face. It was there in the

white moonlit shadows; it drifted in the darkness beyond; it softened,

changed to that of a young girl, sweet, with the same dark, haunting

eyes of her mother. Cameron prayed to that nameless thing within him,

the spirit of something deep and mystical as life. He prayed to that

nameless thing outside, of which the rocks and the sand, the spiked

cactus and the ragged lava, the endless waste, with its vast star-fired

mantle, were but atoms. He prayed for mercy to a woman--for happiness

to her child. Both mother and daughter were close to him then. Time

and distance were annihilated. He had faith--he saw into the future.

The fateful threads of the past, so inextricably woven with his error,

wound out their tragic length here in this forlorn desert.

Cameron then took a little tin box from his pocket, and, opening it,

removed a folded certificate. He had kept a pen, and now he wrote

something upon the paper, and in lieu of ink he wrote with blood. The

moon afforded him enough light to see; and, having replaced the paper,

he laid the little box upon a shelf of rock. It would remain there

unaffected by dust, moisture, heat, time. How long had those painted

images been there clear and sharp on the dry stone walls? There were

no trails in that desert, and always there were incalculable changes.

Cameron saw this mutable mood of nature--the sands would fly and seep

and carve and bury; the floods would dig and cut; the ledges would

weather in the heat and rain; the avalanches would slide; the cactus

seeds would roll in the wind to catch in a niche and split the soil

with thirsty roots. Years would pass. Cameron seemed to see them,

too; and likewise destiny leading a child down into this forlorn waste,

where she would find love and fortune, and the grave of her father.

Cameron covered the dark, still face of his comrade from the light of

the waning moon.

That action was the severing of his hold on realities. They fell away

from him in final separation. Vaguely, dreamily he seemed to behold

his soul. Night merged into gray day; and night came again, weird and

dark. Then up out of the vast void of the desert, from the silence and

illimitableness, trooped his phantoms of peace. Majestically they

formed around him, marshalling and mustering in ceremonious state, and

moved to lay upon him their passionless serenity.

I