by Zane Grey
situation.
His little fire of greasewood threw a wan circle into the surrounding
blackness. Not a sound hinted of life. He longed for even the bark of a
coyote. Silvermane stooped motionless with tired head. Wolf stretched
limply on the sand. Hare rolled into his blanket and stretched out with
slow aching relief.
He dreamed he was a boy roaming over the green hills of the old farm,
wading through dewy clover-fields, and fishing in the Connecticut River.
It was the long vacationtime, an endless freedom. Then he was at the
swimming-hole, and playmates tied his clothes in knots, and with shouts
of glee ran up the bank leaving him there to shiver.
When he awakened the blazing globe of the sun had arisen over the
eastern horizon, and the red of the desert swathed all the reach of
valley.
Hare pondered whether he should use his water at once or dole it out.
That ball of fire in the sky, a glazed circle, like iron at white heat,
decided for him. The sun would be hot and would evaporate such water as
leakage did not claim, and so he shared alike with Wolf, and gave the
rest to Silvermane.
For an hour the mocking lilac mountains hung in the air and then paled
in the intense light. The day was soundless and windless, and the heat-
waves rose from the desert like smoke. For Hare the realities were the
baked clay flats, where Silvermane broke through at every step; the beds
of alkali, which sent aloft clouds of powdered dust; the deep gullies
full of round bowlders; thickets of mesquite and prickly thorn which
tore at his legs; the weary detour to head the canyons; the climb to get
between two bridging mesas; and always the haunting presence of the sad-
eyed dog. His unrealities were the shimmering sheets of water in every
low place; the baseless mountains floating in the air; the green slopes
rising close at hand; beautiful buttes of dark blue riding the open
sand, like monstrous barks at sea; the changing outlines of desert
shapes in pink haze and veils of purple and white lustre--all illusions,
all mysterious tricks of the mirage.
In the heat of midday Hare yielded to its influence and reined in his
horse under a slate-bank where there was shade. His face was swollen and
peeling, and his lips had begun to dry and crack and taste of alkali.
Then Wolf pattered on; Silvermane kept at his heels; Hare dozed in the
saddle. His eyes burned in their sockets from the glare, and it was a
relief to shut out the barren reaches. So the afternoon waned.
Silvermane stumbled, jolting Hare out of his stupid lethargy. Before him
spread a great field of bowlders with not a slope or a ridge or a mesa
or an escarpment. Not even a tip of a spur rose in the background. He
rubbed his sore eyes. Was this another illusion?
When Silvermane started onward Hare thought of the Navajos' custom to
trust horse and dog in such an emergency. They were desert-bred; beyond
human understanding were their sight and scent. He was at the mercy now
of Wolf's instinct and Silvermane's endurance. Resignation brought him a
certain calmness of soul, cold as the touch of an icy hand on fevered
cheek. He remembered the desert secret in Mescal's eyes; he was about to
solve it. He remembered August Naab's words: "It's a man's deed!" If so,
he had achieved the spirit of it, if not the letter. He remembered
Eschtah's tribute to the wilderness of painted wastes: "There is the
grave of the Navajo, and no one knows the trail to the place of his
sleep!" He remembered the something evermore about to be, the unknown
always subtly calling; now it was revealed in the stone-fettering grip
of the desert. It had opened wide to him, bright with its face of
danger, beautiful with its painted windows, inscrutable with its
alluring call. Bidding him enter, it had closed behind him; now he
looked upon it in its iron order, its strange ruins racked by fire, its
inevitable remorselessness.
XV. DESERT NIGHT
THE gray stallion, finding the rein loose on his neck, trotted forward
and overtook the dog, and thereafter followed at his heels. With the
setting of the sun a slight breeze stirred, and freshened as twilight
fell, rolling away the sultry atmosphere. Then the black desert night
mantled the plain.
For a while this blackness soothed the pain of Hare's sun-blinded eyes.
It was a relief to have the unattainable horizon line blotted out. But
by-and-by the opaque gloom brought home to him, as the day had never
done, the reality of his solitude. He was alone in this immense place of
barrenness, and his dumb companions were the world to him. Wolf pattered
onward, a silent guide; and Silvermane followed, never lagging, sure-
footed in the dark, faithful to his master. All the love Hare had borne
the horse was as nothing to that which came to him on this desert night.
In and out, round and round, ever winding, ever zigzagging, Silvermane
hung close to Wolf, and the sandy lanes between the bowlders gave forth
no sound. Dog and horse, free to choose their trail, trotted onward
miles and miles into the night.
A pale light in the east turned to a glow, then to gold, and the round
disc of the moon silhouetted the black bowlders on the horizon. It
cleared the dotted line and rose, an oval orange-hued strange moon, not
mellow nor silvery nor gloriously brilliant as Hare had known it in the
past, but a vast dead-gold melancholy orb, rising sadly over the desert.
To Hare it was the crowning reminder of lifelessness; it fitted this
world of dull gleaming stones.
Silvermane went lame and slackened his trot, causing Hare to rein in and
dismount. He lifted the right forefoot, the one the horse had favored,
and found a stone imbedded tightly in the cloven hoof. He pried it out
with his knife and mounted again. Wolf shone faintly far ahead, and
presently he uttered a mournful cry which sent a chill to the rider's
heart. The silence had been oppressive before; now it was terrible. It
was not a silence of life. It had been broken suddenly by Wolf's howl,
and had closed sharply after it, without echo; it was a silence of
death.
Hare took care not to fall behind Wolf again, he had no wish to hear
that cry repeated. The dog moved onward with silent feet; the horse
wound after him with hoofs padded in the sand; the moon lifted and the
desert gleamed; the bowlders grew larger and the lanes wider. So the
night wore on, and Hare's eyelids grew heavy, and his whole weary body
cried out for rest and forgetfulness. He nodded until he swayed in the
saddle; then righted himself, only to doze again. The east gave birth to
the morning star. The whitening sky was the harbinger of day. Hare could
not bring himself to face the light and heat, and he stopped at a wind-
worn cave under a shelving rock. He was asleep when he rolled out on the
sand-strewn floor. Once he awoke and it was still day, for his eyes
quickly shut upon the glare. He lay sweltering till once more slumber
claimed him. The dog awakened him, with cold nose and low whine. Another
twilig
ht had fallen. Hare crawled out, stiff and sore, hungry and
parching with thirst. He made an attempt to eat, but it was a failure.
There was a dry burning in his throat, a dizzy feeling in his brain, and
there were red flashes before his eyes. Wolf refused meat, and
Silvermane turned from the grain, and lowered his head to munch a few
blades of desert grass.
Then the journey began, and the night fell black. A cool wind blew from
the west, the white stars blinked, the weird moon rose with its ghastly
glow. Huge bowlders rose before him in grotesque shapes, tombs and
pillars and statues of Nature's dead, carved by wind and sand. But some
had life in Hare's disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him,
and stalked abroad and peered at him with deep-set eyes.
Hare fought with all his force against this mood of gloom. Wolf was not
a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; and he would find
water, and that meant life. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would travel to
the furthermost corner of this hell of sand-swept stone. Hare tried to
collect all his spirit, all his energies, but the battle seemed to be
going against him. All about him was silence,
