Walker pulled out his watch.
“You’ve got us on the wrong road, Zane,” he snapped.
“I don’t think so,” I told him.
I was watching for landmarks. At last I saw them. I knew right where I was.
There was a dry wash with bowlders, and the road dropped right off into it, a drop of two feet at least.
I put it in low and stepped on it.
“Look out!” yelled Walker.
I grabbed for the emergency brake, but I stepped on the throttle. The front of the car took the drop. There was a terrific jar. Then a stone went through the transmission. A front wheel gave way, and there we were. Water was hissing and boiling, streaming out of the radiator.
“You clumsy fool!” yelled Walker.
I turned around.
“Anybody hurt?” I asked.
Nobody was much the worse for the shock. Pedro’s ankle was pretty bad. It was bothering him. Walker was sore. The gambler had cut his wrist with the side of one of the handcuffs as the car had made the plunge. Aside from that, they were all right.
“I told you, Walker, I was more at home with a burro than an automobile.”
He got out and surveyed the mess.
“All due to clumsy incompetence!” he stormed. “For years I’ve had you pointed out, Bob Zane, as the man who knew the desert, the old timer who knew every single inch of the desert as far as there was any desert. And here you go and get us on the wrong road, and then put your foot on the gasoline instead of the brake pedal!”
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
Pedro and Walker took turns in cussing me.
The gambler said nothing.
“Well,” I told them, “we’ll have to wait for daylight now, and try to see where we are.”
Walker stormed around and threatened to file charges against me for interfering with an officer in the discharge of his duty, and a lot more stuff.
Pedro was having trouble with his ankle. He cursed in a low, sullen undertone. The gambler was very suave, very much of a gentleman. He asked Walker to take off the handcuffs. Walker finally unlocked one and locked the other around the robe rail.
It wasn’t a comfortable night, what was left of it.
Morning showed us just what I knew it would show us, the most desolate, God-forsaken stretch of barren country that one could imagine.
There were rolling hills that seemed to stretch in an unbroken sea of glittering desolation. We were down in a sort of cañon.
The car was hopeless. The water had even drained out of the radiator and made a moist place in the thirsty sand.
The sun sent its rays beating down fiercely.
There was no shade.
The men took stock of the situation. Walker was going to remain with his prisoner, come what might. Pedro’s ankle prevented him from walking.
“You’ve got to go and get help,” said Walker, “and don’t bungle it like you did in getting us out here.”
“Okay,” I said, “providing you remember to stay with the car. That’s where trouble starts on the desert. The car gets wrecked, one man goes for help. The others get impatient and start out to search for him. When help comes the men are scattered all over the desert. By the time they find ’em it’s too late. You can sit still in the shade of the car and conserve your strength better than you can by bucking the heat of the desert.”
“Get started,” Walker snarled. “You’d think you was putting on a talk for tenderfeet. Get started.”
I headed east.
Walker yelled at me: “Don’t tackle that road. It leads back to Jawbone Cañon eventually, and there’s no traffic over that. Head to the north. You should strike the main highway by midnight!”
I kept on walking due east.
Walker came running up alongside of me. I could hear the crunch of his feet in the sand and the rattle of his voice in angry expostulation; but I didn’t pay any attention to it. I just kept plugging along.
After a while I said:
“How about your prisoner? I thought your duty was to look after him.”
Walker whirled, looked back at the car, cursed me some more, and then jog trotted back. I didn’t look at him. I just kept on going due east.
After an hour I’d lost sight of the car and the road. There was nothing around me but desert, a vast furnace of heat. The hot sand burned through the soles of my shoes. The sun beat down mercilessly.
The white-hot glare of the light on the sand made the eye muscles ache until the whole brain throbbed with a dreadful weariness from which there was no relief.
I swung down a wash between two hills, heading toward the south.
I walked until afternoon, making a big circle, taking great care not to leave prints within a long distance of the car. It was three o’clock when I topped a little hill ’way over on the west of the car and looked at it.
The car cast a splotch of shadow, and that splotch of shadow showed jet black on the glittering sand. The men were sprawled in that area of shadow, motionless, lifeless in appearance.
I was tired. I lay down and slept.
Toward sunset I looked at them again.
They were stirring around a little. I knew I was practically invisible with the sun in the heavens back of me, but I had only the very top of my head sticking up, and I was cautious.
When the sun started to slide behind the mountains in the west I ducked down into my cañon and picked out a place to spend the night. I gathered a lot of scrub sage and piled it in a sheltered place against a ledge. By the time it was dark I took a last look.
The men had a fire going. It would be cold there in the desert at night, and they’d gone out and picked up some sage and piled it around. They’d conserve their fuel.
I went back to my bed of sage and went to sleep.
When morning came I kept in the bed. I was a little chilled, but the sun started stoking up the surface heat of the desert, and the horizons started to shimmy.
I kept under cover all morning. Not until the sun started down in the west did I dare to risk looking out at them.
They weren’t keeping so quiet now. They were standing out, staring over the desert, straining their eyes for some sign of help.
They figured I’d have hit the Jawbone Cañon road by night and should have been showing up with help.
I knew how they felt, listening for the sound of a motor, every time a breath of wind made a noise as it rustled past the sage their hopeful ears would interpret it as sound made by a motor.
It was dry work, and it was hungry work. I hadn’t eaten, and I hadn’t had anything to drink. I’m an old desert man, and a man who’s lived a long time in the desert doesn’t sweat as much as a man who hasn’t dried out any. Even at that, I felt the heat and had to carry a pebble in my mouth to keep any saliva on my tongue.
I watched the men.
They got impatient. Once or twice Walker would move out a ways and climb to a little hill where he’d look all around. I could see Pedro when he moved. The foot was bothering him.
The desert was silent, vast, unchanging, patient.
The men moved about; little, aimless motions that relieved the tension of the mind, and yet built up more nervousness. I watched them until almost sundown. Then I went back and lay down.
There was a restlessness, a feeling of fear. Well as I knew the desert, well as I knew my own plans, I had that peculiar feeling. It comes from experiencing the pangs of hunger and the suffering of thirst when one’s out in the desert.