But all the men were agreed that
Yaqui had hidden Mercedes where only the eyes of a vulture could
have found her.
Jim Lash crawled into a little strip of shade and bided the time
tranquilly. Ladd was restless and impatient and watchful, every
little while rising to look up the far-reaching slope, and then to
the right, where Yaqui's dark figure stood out from a high point
of the rim. Thorne grew silent, and seemed consumed by a slow,
sullen rage. Gale was neither calm nor free of a gnawing suspense
nor of a waiting wrath. But as best he could he put the pending
action out of mind.
It came over him all of a sudden that he had not grasped the
stupendous nature of this desert setting. There was the measureless
red slope, its lower ridges finally sinking into white sand dunes
toward the blue sea. The cold, sparkling light, the white sun,
the deep azure of sky, the feeling of boundless expanse all around
him--these meant high altitude. Southward the barren red simply
merged into distance. The field of craters rose in high, dark
wheels toward the dominating peaks. When Gale withdrew his gaze
from the magnitude of these spaces and heights the crater beneath
him seemed dwarfed. Yet while he gazed it spread and deepened
and multiplied its ragged lines. No, he could not grasp the meaning
of size or distance here. There was too much to stun the sight.
But the mood in which nature had created this convulsed world
of lava seized hold upon him.
Pages:
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267