Adam’s heavy slumbers were punctuated by periods when he half awakened,
drowsily aware of extreme heat, of discomfort and sluggish pain, and of
vague sounds.
Twilight had fallen when he fully awakened, stiff and sore, with a
gnawing at his stomach and a parching of mouth and throat from thirst.
He crawled out of the copse of arrowweed, to the opening by which he
had entered it, and, stealthily proceeding on to the road, he peered
out and listened. No man in sight--no sound to alarm! Consciousness
of immense relief brought bitterly home to him the fact that he was a
fugitive. Taking to the road, he walked rapidly in the direction of the
lights. He passed low, dark huts somewhat back from the road, and he
heard strange voices, probably of Indians.
In about a quarter of an hour he came to the river basin, where the
road dropped down somewhat into the outskirts of Yuma. Most of the
lights were across the river on the Arizona side. He met both Mexicans
and Indians who took no apparent notice of him, and this encouraged
Adam to go on with them down to a ferry-boat.
The boat was shoved off. Adam saw that it was fastened to the cable
overhead by ropes and pulleys. The current worked it across the river.
Adam got out with the rest of the passengers, and, leaving them, he
walked down the bank a few rods. He found a little dock with a skiff
moored to it, and here he lay flat and drank his fill. The water was
full of sand, but cool and palatable. Then he washed his face and
hands. The latter were swollen and stiff from the cactus thorns,
rendering them clumsy.
Next in order for him was to find a place to eat, and soon he came at
once upon an eating house where several rough-looking white men and
some Mexicans were being served by a Chinaman.
When he ended this meal he had determined upon a course to take. He
needed a gun, ammunition, canteen, burro, and outfit; and he hardly
expected to be able to purchase them after dark, without exciting
suspicion. All the same, he set out to look.
A short walk brought Adam to a wide street, dimly lighted by the
flare of lamps from open doors of saloons and stores. He halted in a
shadow on the corner. A stream of men was passing--rugged, unshaven,
dusty-booted white men, and Mexicans with their peaked sombreros and
embroidered jackets and tight braided trousers.
Presently Adam ventured forth and walked up the street. The town
resembled Picacho in its noisiest hours, magnified many times. He felt
a wildness he could not see or hear. It dragged at him. It somehow made
him a part of the frontier life. He longed to escape from himself.
A glimpse of a tall man in black frock coat startled Adam. That coat
reminded him of Collishaw. He sheered down a side street into the
gloom. He saw wagons and heard the munch of horses in stalls. Evidently
this place was a barnyard and might afford him a safe retreat for the
night. The first wagon he examined contained straw. Climbing into it,
he lay down. For a long time he lay there, worrying over the risk he
must run next day, until at length he fell asleep.
* * * * *
When day dawned, however, Adam had not such overpowering dread. The sun
was rising in red splendor and the day promised to be hot. As it was
early, but few people were to be encountered, and this fact lent Adam
more courage. He had no difficulty in finding the place where he had
eaten the night before. Adam ate as heartily as he could, not because
he was hungry, but for the reason that he had an idea he might have to
travel far on this meal.
That done, he sallied forth to find a store where he could purchase the
outfit he needed; and he approached the business section by a street
that climbed to what was apparently the highest point in Yuma.
Adam entered a store, and almost forgot himself in the interest of
the purchases he wanted to make. He needed a small mule, or burro, to
pack his outfit, and while the storekeeper went out to get it for Adam
several Mexicans entered. One of them recognized Adam. He cried out,
“Santa Maria!” and ran out, followed by his amazed but less hurried
comrades. It took Adam a moment to place the man in mind. Felix! the
Mexican that had drawn a knife on Arallanes.
Therefore Adam pondered. He must take risks to get away with this
necessary outfit. The storekeeper, who had gone out through the back
of the store, returned to say he could furnish a good burro ready to
be packed at once. Adam made a deal with him for the whole outfit
and began to count out the money. The storekeeper did not wait, and,
gathering up an armful of Adam’s purchases, he carried them out through
the back door. This gave Adam opportunity to have a look from the front
door into the street. There strode Felix, gesticulating wildly to
the white man Adam had seen before, the black-coated tall Collishaw,
significant and grim, with a white bandage over his face.
A shock pierced Adam’s heart, and it was followed by a terrible icy
compression, and then a bursting gush of blood, a flood of fire over
all his body. Leaping like a deer, he bounded back through the store,
out of the door, and across an open space full of implements, wagons,
and obstacles he had to run around or jump over. He did not see the
storekeeper. One vault took him over a high board fence into an alley,
and through this he ran into a street. He headed for the river, running
fleetly, blind to all around him but the ground flying under his
feet and the end of the street. He gained that. The river, broad and
swirling, lay beneath him. Plunging down the bank, he flew toward the
dock. Upon reaching the dock, Adam espied a skiff, with oars in place,
with bow pulled up on the sand. One powerful shove sent it, with him
aboard, out into the stream. He bent the oars in his long, strong
sweeps, and it took him only a few moments to cross. Not yet had any
men appeared in pursuit or even to take notice of him. As he jumped out
on the California shore of the river and began to run north, he found
that he faced the lone black mountain peak which dominated the rise
of the desert. The dust was ankle deep. It stifled him, choked him,
and caked on his sweaty face and hands. He strode swiftly, oppressed
by the dust and intolerant of the confining borders of yellow brush.
The frequent bends in the road were at once a relief and a dread.
They hid him, yet obstructed his own view. He seemed obsessed by a
great, passionate energy to escape. When he looked back he thought of
Collishaw, of sure pursuit; when he looked ahead he thought of the
road, the dust, the brush into which he wanted to hide, the physical
things to be overcome.
By and by he climbed and passed out of the zone of brush. He was on
the open gravel ridges, like the ridges of a washboard, up and down,
and just as bare. Yet, as a whole, there was a distinct slope upward.
He could not see the level of the desert, but the lone mountain peak,
close at hand now, red and black and shining, towered bleakly over him.
Adam derived satisfaction from the fact that the hard gravel ridges
did not take imprint of his boots. Assured now that escape was in
his grasp, he began to put his mind upon other considerations of his
flight. He was not such a fool as to underrate the danger of his
venturing out upon the desert without food, and especially without
water. Already he was thirsty. These thoughts, and counter ones,
pressed hard upon him until he surmounted the long slope to the top of
the desert mesa. Here he looked back.
First he saw clouds of dust puffing up from the brush-covered lowlands,
and then, in an open space where the road crossed, he espied horsemen
coming at a gallop. Again, and just as fiercely, did his veins seem to
freeze, his blood to halt, and then to burst into flame.
“Collishaw--and his men!” gasped Adam, his jaw dropping. “They’ve
trailed me!... They’re after me--on horses!”
The apparent fact was terrific in its stunning force. Adam reeled; his
sight blurred. It was a full moment before he could rally his forces.
Then, gazing keenly, he saw that his pursuers were still miles away.
At first he ran fleetly, with endurance apparently unimpaired, but he
meant to slow down and husband his strength as soon as he dared. Before
him stretched a desert floor of fine, shining gravel, like marbles,
absolutely bare of any vegetation for what seemed hundreds of yards;
and then began to appear short bunches of low meager brush called
greasewood, and here and there isolated patches of _ocatilla_. These
multiplied and enlarged in the distance until they looked as if they
would afford cover enough to hide Adam from his pursuers. Hot, wet with
sweat, strong, and panting, he ran another mile, to find the character
of the desert changing.
Reaching the zone of plant life, he soon placed a thin but effective
barrier of greasewood and _ocatilla_ behind him. Then he slowed down
to catch his breath. Before him extended a vast hazy expanse, growing
darker with accumulated growths in the distance. To the right rose the
chocolate mountain range, and it ran on to fade in the dim horizon.
Behind him now stood the lone black peak, and to the left rose a low,
faint wavering line of white, like billows of a sea. This puzzled him
until at length he realized it was sand. Sand--and it, like the range,
faded in the distant horizon.
Adam also made the discovery that as he looked back over his shoulder
he was really looking down a long, gradual slope. Plainly he could see
the edge of the desert where he had come up, and often, as he traveled
along at a jog trot, he gazed around with fearful expectancy. He had
imagined that his running had given rise to the breeze blowing in his
face. But this was not so. A rather stiff wind was blowing straight at
him. It retarded his progress, and little puffs of fine, invisible sand
or dust irritated his eyes. Then the tears would flow and wash them
clear again. With all his senses and feelings there mingled a growing
preponderance of thought or realization of the tremendous openness of
the desert. He felt as though a door of the universe had opened to him,
and all before him was boundless. He had no fear of it; indeed, there
seemed a comfort in the sense of being lost in such a vastness; but
there was something intangible working on his mind. The wind weighed
upon him, the coppery sky weighed upon him, the white sun weighed upon
him, and his feet began to take hold of the ground. How hot the top
of his head and his face! All at once the sweat appeared less copious
and his skin drier. With this came a strong thirst. The saliva of his
mouth was pasty and scant. He swallowed hard and his throat tightened.
A couple of pebbles that he put into his mouth mitigated these last
sensations.
Intelligence gave him pause then, and he halted in his tracks. If death
was relentlessly pursuing him, it was no less confronting him there to
the fore, if he passed on out of reach of the river. Death from thirst
was preferable to capture, but Adam was not ready to die. He who had
loved life clung to it all the more fiercely now that the sin of Cain
branded his soul. He still felt unlimited strength and believed that
he could go far. But the sun was hotter than he had ever experienced
it; the heat appeared to strike up from the earth as well as burn down
from above; and it was having a strange effect upon him. He had sensed
a difficulty in keeping to a straight line of travel, and at first had
put it down to his instinct for zigzagging to his greasewood bush and
that _ocatilla_ plant to place them behind him. Moving on again, he
turned toward the chocolate mountain and the river.
It seemed close. He saw the bare gray desert with its green growths
slope gradually to the rugged base of the range. Somewhere between him
and there ran the river. He strained his eyesight. How strangely and
clearly the lines of one ridge merged into the lines of another! There
must be distance between them. But it could not be seen. The range
looked larger and farther away the more he studied it--the air more
full of transparent haze, the red and russet and chocolate hues more
quiveringly suggestive of illusion.
“Look here,” panted Adam, as he halted once more. “I’ve been told about
the desert. But I didn’t pay particular attention and now I can’t
remember.... I only know it’s hot--and this won’t do.”
It was just then that Adam, gazing back down the gray desert, saw puffs
of dust and horses.
Panic seized him. He ran directly away from his pursuers, bending low,
looking neither to right nor to left, violent, furious, heedless, like
an animal in flight. And with no sense of direction, with no use of
reason, he ran on till he dropped.
Then his breast seemed to split and his heart to lift with terrific
pressure, agonizing and suffocating. He lay on the ground and gasped,
with his mouth in the dust. Gradually the paroxysm subsided.
He arose to go on, hot, dry, aching, dizzy, but still strong in his
stride.
“I’ve--got--away,” he said, “and now--the river--the river.”
Fear of Collishaw had been dulled. Adam could think of little besides
the heat and his growing thirst, and this thing--the desert--that was
so strange, so big, so menacing. It did not alarm him that his skin was
no longer wet with sweat, but the fact struck him singularly.
The wind was blowing sand in his face, obstructing his sight. Suddenly
his feet dragged in sand. Dimly then he made out low sand dunes with
hollows between, and farther on larger dunes waving and billowing on to
rise to what seemed mountains of sand. He saw them as through a veil of
dust. Turning away, he plodded on, half blinded, fighting the blast of
wind that was growing stronger. The air cleared somewhat. Sand dunes
were all around him, and to his right, in the direction he thought was
wrong, loomed the chocolate range. He went that way, and again the
flying sand hid a clear view. A low, seeping, silken rustle filled the
air, sometimes rising to a soft roar. He thought of what he had heard
about sandstorms, but he knew this was not one. Unwittingly he had
wandered into the region of the dunes, and the strong gusty wind swept
up the fine sand in sheets and clouds. He must get out. It could not
be far to the level desert again. He plodded on, and the way he chose,
with its intermittent views of the mountains, at last appeared to be
the wrong one. So he turned again. And as he turned, a stronger wind,
now at his back, whipped up the sand till all was pale yellow around
him, thick and opaque and moaning, through which the sun shone with
strange magenta hue. He did not dare rest or wait. He had to plod on.
And the way led through soft, uneven sand, always dragging at his feet.
After a while Adam discovered that when he trudged down into the
hollows between dunes he became enveloped in flying sand that forced
him to cover mouth and eyes with his scarf and go choking on, but when
he climbed up over a dune the air became clearer and he could breath
easier. Thus instinctively he favored the ascents, and thus he lost
himself in a world of curved and sculptured sand dunes, gray and yellow
through the flying mists, or steely silver under the gleaming sunlight.
The wind lulled, letting the sand settle, and then he saw he was lost
as upon a trackless ocean, with no landmarks in sight. On all sides
heaved beautiful white mounds of sand, ribbed and waved and laced with
exquisitely delicate knife-edged curves. And these crests changed like
the crests of waves, only, instead of flying spray, these were curled
and shadowed veils of sand blowing from the scalloped crowns. Then
again the wind, swooping down, whipped and swept the sand in low thick
sheets on and on over the dunes, until thin rising clouds obscured the
sky.
Adam climbed on, growing weaker. As the heat had wrought strangely
upon his blood, so the sand had dragged strength from his legs. His
situation was grave, but, though he felt the dread and pity of it, a
certain violence of opposition had left him. That was in his will. He
feared more the instinctive reaction--the physical resistance that
was growing in him. Merryvale had told him how men lost on the desert
could die of thirst in one day. But Adam had scarcely credited that;
certainly he did not believe it applicable to himself. He realized,
however, that unless he somehow changed the present condition sun and
sand would overwhelm him. So when from a high knoll of sand he saw down
into a large depression, miles across, where clumps of mesquites showed
black against the silver, he descended toward them and eventually
reached them, ready indeed to drop into the shade.
Here under a thick-foliaged mesquite he covered his face with a
handkerchief, his head with his coat, and settled himself to rest and
wait. It was a wise move. At once he felt by contrast what the fierce
sun had been. Gradually the splitting headache subsided to a sensation
that seemed to Adam like a gentle boiling of blood in his brain. He
could hear it. His dry skin became a little moist; the intolerable burn
left it; his heart and pulse ceased such labored throbbing; and after a
time his condition was limited to less pain, a difficulty in breathing,
and thirst. These were bearable.
From time to time Adam removed the coverings to look about him. The
sun was westering. When it sank the wind would cease to blow and then
he could find a way out of this wilderness of sand dunes. Leaning back
against a low branch of the tree, he stretched out, and such was his
exhaustion and the restfulness of the posture that he fell asleep.
When he awoke he felt better, though half smothered. He had rested. His
body was full of dull aches, but no more pain. His mouth did not appear
so dry or his tongue so swollen; nevertheless, the thirst remained,
giving his throat a sensation of puckering, such as he remembered he
used to have after eating green persimmons.
Then Adam, suddenly realizing what covered his head, threw off the
coat and handkerchief. And his eyes were startled by such a sight as
they had never beheld--a marvelous unreality of silver sheen and black
shadow, a starry tracery of labyrinthine streams on a medium as weird
and beautiful and intangible as a dream.
“O God! am I alive or dead?” he whispered in awe. And his voice proved
to him that he and his burden had not slipped into the oblivion of the
beyond.
Night had fallen. The moon had arisen. The stars shone lustrously. The
sky burned a deep rich blue. And all this unreal beauty that had mocked
him was only the sculptured world of sand translating the magnificence
and splendor of the heavens.
More than all else, Adam grew sensitive to the oppressiveness of
the silence. His first steps were painful, a staggering, halting
gait, that exercise at length worked into some semblance of his old
stride. The cold desert air invigorated him, and if it had not been
for the discomfort of thirst he would have been doing well under the
circumstances.
A sense of direction that had nothing to do with his intelligence
prompted him to face east. He obeyed it. And he walked for what seemed
hours over a moon-blanched sea of sand, to climb at last a high dune
from which he saw the dark, level floor of the desert, and far across
the shadowy space a black range of mountains. He thought he recognized
the rugged contour, and when, sweeping his gaze southward, he saw the
lone mountain looming like a dark sentinel over the desert gateway,
then he was sure of his direction. Over there to the east lay the
river. And he had long hours of the cool night to travel.
From this vantage point Adam looked back over the silver sea of sand
dunes; and such was the sight of it that even in his precarious
condition he was stirred to his depths. The huge oblong silver moon
hung low over that vast heaving stretch of desert. It was a wasteland,
shimmering with its belts and plains of moonlit sand, blank and
mysterious in its shadows, an abode of loneliness. An inexplicable
sadness pervaded Adam’s soul. This wasteland and he seemed identical.
How strange to feel that he did not want to leave it! Life could not
be sustained in this sepulcher of the desert. But it was not life that
his soul yearned for then--only peace. And peace dwelt there in that
solitude of the sands.
* * * * *
Gray dawn found Adam many miles closer to the mountain range. Yet
it was still far and his former dread returned. On every side what
interminable distances!
A deepening rose color over the eastern horizon appeared to be
reflected upon the mountain peaks, and this glow crept down the dark
slopes. Gray dawn changed to radiant morning with an ethereal softness
of color. When the blazing disk of the sun shone over the ramparts of
the east all that desert world underwent a wondrous transfiguration.
The lord of day had arisen and this was his empire. Red was the hue
of his authority, emblazoned in long vivid rays over the ranges and
the wastelands. Then the great orb of fire cleared the horizon and the
desert seemed aflame.
One moment Adam gave to the marvel and glory of the sunrise, and then
he looked no more. That brief moment ended in a consciousness of the
gravity of his flight. For the first touch of sun on face and hands
burned hot, as if it suddenly aggravated a former burn that the night
had soothed.
“Got to reach--river soon,” he muttered, thickly, “or never will.”
He walked on while the sun climbed.
Desert vegetation increased. Adam toiled on, breathing hard, careless
now of the reaching thorns and heedless of the rougher ground.
He was perfectly conscious of a subtle changing of his spirit, but
because it seemed a drifting farther and farther from thought he could
not comprehend it. Courage diminished as fear augmented. More and more
his will and intelligence gave way to sensorial perceptions. More and
more he felt the urge to hurry, and, though reason warned against the
folly of this, it was not strong enough to compel him to resist. He did
hurry more and stumbled along. Like breath of a furnace the heat rose
from the rocky, sandy soil; and from above there seemed to bear down
the weight of the leaden fire.
His skin became as dry as dust and began to shrivel. It did not
blister. The pain now came from burn of the flesh underneath. He felt
that his blood was drying up. A stinging sensation as of puncture
by a thousand thorns throbbed in his face and neck. The heat burned
through his clothes, and the soles of his boots were coals of fire.
Doggedly he strove forward. A whistle accompanied his panting breaths.
Most intolerable of all was thirst--the bitter, astringent taste in
the scant saliva that became pasty and dry, the pain in his swelling
tongue, the parched constriction in his throat.
At last he reached the base of a low rocky ridge which for long had
beckoned to him and mocked him. It obstructed sight of the slope to the
mountain range. Surely between that ridge and the slope ran the river.
The hope spurred him upward.
As he climbed he gazed up into the coppery sky, but his hot and tired
eyes could not endure the great white blaze that was the sun. Halfway
up he halted to rest, and from here he had measureless view of the
desert. Then his dull brain revived to a final shock. For he seemed to
see a thousand miles of green-gray barrenness, of lifting heat veils
like transparent smoke, of wastes of waved sand, and of ranges of
upheaved rock. How terribly it confronted him! Pitiless mockery of
false distances on all sides! A sun-blasted world not meant for man!
Then Adam ascended to the summit of the ridge. A glaring void seemed
flung at him. His chocolate-hued mountain range was not far away. From
this height he could see all the gray-green level of desert between him
and the range. He stared. Again there seemed flung in his face a hot
glare of space. There was no river.
“Where, where’s--the river?” gasped Adam, mistrusting his eyesight.
But the wonderful Rio Colorado, the strange red river beloved by desert
wanderers, did not flow before him--or to either side--or behind. It
must have turned to flow on the other slope of this insurmountable
range.
“God has--forsaken me!” cried Adam, in despair, and he fell upon the
rocks.
But these rocks, hot as red-hot plates of iron, permitted of no
contact, even in a moment of horror. Adam was burned to stagger up,
to plunge and run and fall down the slope, out upon the level, to the
madness that awaited him.
He must rush on to the river--to drink and drink--to bathe in the cool
water that flowed down from the snow-fed lakes of the north. Thoughts
about water possessed his mind--pleasant, comforting, hurrying him
onward. Memory of the great river made pictures in his mind, and there
flowed the broad red waters, sullen and eddying and silent. All the
streams and rivers and lakes Adam had known crowded their images across
his inward eye, and this recall of the past was sweet. He remembered
the brook near his old home--the clear green water full of bright
minnows and gold-sided sunfish; how it used to flow swiftly under the
willow banks where violets hid by mossy stones, and how it tarried
in deep dark pools under shelving banks, green and verdant and sweet
smelling; how the ferns used to bend over in graceful tribute and
the lilies float white and gold, with great green-backed frogs asleep
upon the broad leaves. The watering trough on the way to school, many
and many a time, in the happy days gone by, had he drunk there and
splashed his brother Guerd. Guerd, who hated water and had to be made
to wash, when they were little boys! The old well on Madden’s farm with
its round cobblestoned walls where the moss and lichen grew, and where
the oaken bucket, wet and dark and green, used to come up bumping and
spilling, brimful of clear cold water--how vividly he remembered that!
His father had called it granite water, and the best, because it flowed
through the cold subterranean caverns of granite rock. Then there was
the spring in the orchard, sweet, soft water that his mother used to
send him after, and as he trudged home, burdened by the huge bucket, he
would spill some upon his bare feet.
Yes, as Adam staggered on, aimlessly now, he was haunted more and more
by memories of water. That dear, unforgetable time of boyhood when he
used to love the water, to swim like a duck and bask like a turtle--it
seemed far back in the past, across some terrible interval of pain,
vague now, yet hateful. Where was he--and where was Guerd? Something
like a blade pierced his heart.
Suddenly Adam was startled out of this pleasant reminiscence by
something blue and bright that danced low down along the desert floor.
A lake! He halted with an inarticulate cry. There was a lake of blue
water, glistening, exquisitely clear, with borders of green. He could
not help but rush forward. The lake shimmered, thinned, shadowed, and
vanished. Adam halted and, rubbing his eyes, peered hard ahead and
all around. Behind him shone a strip of blue, streaked up and down
by desert plants, and it seemed to be another lake, larger, bluer,
clearer, with a delicate vibrating quiver, as if exquisitely rippled
by a gentle breeze. Green shores were marvelously reflected in the
blue. Adam gaped at this. Had he waded through a lake? He had crossed
that barren flat of greasewood to reach the spot upon which he now
stood. Almost he was forced to run back. But this must be a deceit of
the desert or a madness of his sight. He bent low, and the lake of
blue seemed to lift and quiver upon a thin darkling line of vapor or
transparent shadow. Adam took two strides back--and the thing vanished!
Desert magic! A deception of nature! A horrible illusion to a lost man
growing crazed by thirst!
“Mirage!” whispered Adam, hoarsely. “Blue water! Ha-ha!... Damned
lie--it sha’n’t fool me!”
But as clear perception failed these mirages of the desert did deceive
him. All objects took on a hazy hue, tinged by the red of blood in his
eyes, and they danced in the heat-veiled air. Shadows, glares, cactus,
and brush stood as immovable as the rocks of ages. Only the illusive
and ethereal mirages gleamed as if by magic and shimmered and moved in
that midday trance of the sun-blasted desert.
The time came when Adam plunged toward every mirage that floated so
blue and serene and mystical in the deceiving atmosphere, until hope
and despair and magnified sight finally brought on a mental state
bordering on the madness sure to come.
Then, as he staggered toward this green-bordered pond and that
crystal-blue lake, already drinking and laving in his mind, he began
to hear the beautiful sounds of falling rain, of gurgling brooks,
of lapping waves, of roaring rapids, of gentle river currents, of
water--water--water sweetly tinkling and babbling, of wind-laden murmur
of a mountain stream. And he began to wander in a circle.