No matter where the place in the desert, there’s that sinister silence that comes thundering to the consciousness, the vast, aching space that’s a breeder of panic in those who don’t know the desert and love it.
For just a half second I felt the urge of that blind panic, the fear of the very bigness of the desert, the contagion of the void which seemed to creep into my soul and suck the very life out of me.
Then I took a deep breath and the feeling left me.
The desert had stamped its mark upon me, and branded me for its own. Gone was that feeling of panic. In its place was one of calm peace. The desert had ceased to terrify me with its waiting patience, and had inspired me, instead, with its tranquillity.
I slept.
I awoke at night and heard the desert talking.
It’s a strange experience, lying out in the desert and listening to the sand slither along on the wings of those mysterious night winds which spring up from nowhere, blow violently, then die down again.
The sand scurries along on the wings of the wind, and rustles against the sage and the cacti. Then, as the wind freshens, sand rustles along on the surface of the sand itself. The whole desert seethes into life, and every grain rubs against the other grains, giving forth a faint suggestion of inaudible sound which, multiplied a thousandfold, comes to the ears as an intangible whisper.
You try to pin it down to some definite sound, and it’s just a peculiar undertone of faint noise underlying the desert wind. Relax and immediately it becomes a whisper, slitheringly insistent, hissing and mysterious.
I’ve known men to go almost crazy when they were alone out in the desert and the sand started to whisper.
I crawled up on the ridge and looked over at the men around the machine. They were keeping the fire going, and they were huddled around the flame. They wanted companionship more than warmth. That’s the way with men who are plunged out into the middle of the desert.
They find themselves alone with their own souls. They strive to keep from facing themselves, clutching at every vestige of human companionship, yet always being swept into the silence.
These men were clutching at each other as a drowning man clutches at straws. And the attempt to avoid the inevitable was as futile. They were facing their own souls, stripped stark naked of the artificial standards of a civilization that’s coated with gilt.
Back amongst their kind they’d have standards of success in life that would be measured by gold, by power, by an ability to wrest from their fellow men.
Out here in the desert, standing face to face with themselves, with the grim specter of death jeering at their elbows, there was only one standard of life. The great whispering desert, and the steady silent stars, knew what that standard was. Remorselessly, inexorably, the desert was holding her mirror to these three men.
I nodded my satisfaction, and stumbled my way down to my bed of sage. I lay and listened to the desert talk to me.
Morning. The golden rays of the sun touched the tops of the mountains. The purple shadows shrank into little pools which hugged the face of the desert, then disappeared. The heat beat down like a smothering blanket. The skyline of the mountains wavered, tilted, wavered, and broke into a devil dance of its own, a thing of heat distortion and mirage.
I risked peering over the ridge.
The last semblance of self-control had vanished. The men were moving about. That is, Pedro and one other man were moving. I could tell Pedro by the limp. The other man might have been either the deputy or the gambler. I couldn’t tell at the distance.
They made frequent journeys to the tops of the knolls, and they broke into running steps at times, running steps which their panic-sticken minds finally controlled, beat into a walk. But, ever and anon, the control of the mind would slip. The sight of death, jeering at their elbows, would send them into a run again.
I waited until it was noon, until the tongue in my mouth felt like a great ball of dry blotting paper that was sucking the soul stuff from my blood. Then I topped the ridge and came stumblingly down the slope.
I’d gone two hundred yards before they saw me.
Then they paused in their restless motions to stare at me, little sticks of black standing grotesquely against the white glare of the desert.
Then they ran toward me.
I had a pinch of tobacco in either hand. I put a bit in my eyes. The eyes streamed water, then flamed into red anger. I stumbled on and stared with those red eyes at the two men who came weaving their heavy-footed way across the hot sands.
Walker tried to speak, and could not.
Pedro Gonzales limped after him. He stared at me with incredulous eyes.
“You didn’t find it?”
I pretended to be delirious.
“Help,” I said thickly. “Three men in an automobile in the desert. I came east. They’re west!”
I pointed a wavering finger at the horizon which shimmered in hot mockery.
“Go to them. Give me water. Water! Water!”
Pedro Gonzales cursed.
“Walked in a big circle like a damned tenderfoot! This is the end!”
Walker mumbled. “Too late for us to try now. We’re dying!”
They stumbled their way back to the car. I staggered after them.
The gambler looked up. His face was calm as the desert, utterly expressionless. He smiled a greeting.
“Hello,” he said. “You got back?”
“It’s the end, you fool,” said Pedro Gonzales. “He walked in a circle...”
“Sure, I know,” observed the gambler. “We have to face it some time.”
They stared at him with their reddened, feverish eyes.
I flopped over on the sand and kept mumbling for water.
The sun beat down on the dazzling sand which shifted and swayed in the heat waves. The eyes ached with the white glare. The heat seemed to have started the blood boiling.
“It’s the end,” said Pedro Gonzales, mouthing the words in toneless, foolish repetition.
I sat up on the sand and stared at him with my bloodshot eyes.
“Why don’t you die clean?” I asked him.
V. The Confession
Walker said: “Don’t mind him. It’s the delirium. They get the strength of ten men, run up and down and tear their clothes off and talk crazy things. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
I got to my feet and let my eyes get big and staring.
“Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about!” I said. “I was crazy when I came here, but I know now what I’m doing. I found Pete Blaine out there on the desert. He had tried to walk for water, and he was dying when I came on him.
“He’d gone on ahead in the dark, and fallen over the edge of the cañon and broken his leg. He knew he was dying. I was there with him when he died.
“He couldn’t die with murder on his soul. He told me all about it. Pete and Pedro killed that old prospector. Not for the gold, but because they wanted this gambler out of the way.
“They were going to frame an alibi. They left town and pretended they were going on down the Jawbone Cañon road. But they didn’t. They sneaked back and killed the old prospector and took the gold, to make it look like robbery.
“Then they went down the Jawbone Cañon road, but they were only about twenty minutes ahead of us. They smashed the car on purpose, so that they’d have an alibi. They said the car had been broken down for about two hours. It wasn’t anything of the sort. The car had only been broken down about twenty minutes. That’s why the radiator burned my arm when I touched it.”
I stopped and stared around at the men with my reddened eyes.
The gambler sat quiet, almost detached, his face absolutely expressionless. Pedro Gonzales’s face had twisted into a spasm of expression. His eyes were staring.