They worked if they had something to do, or
could invent a pretext. They told and retold stories until all
were wearisome. They sang songs. Mercedes taught Spanish. They
played every game they knew. They invented others that were so
trivial children would scarcely have been interested, and these
they played seriously. In a word, with intelligence and passion,
with all that was civilized and human, they fought the ever-infringing
loneliness, the savage solitude of their environment.
But they had only finite minds. It was not in reason to expect a
complete victory against this mighty Nature, this bounding horizon
of death and desolation and decay. Gradually they fell back upon
fewer and fewer occupations, until the time came when the silence
was hard to break.
Gale believed himself the keenest of the party, the one who thought
most, and he watched the effect of the desert upon his companions.
He imagined that he saw Ladd grow old sitting round the campfire.
Certain it was that the ranger's gray hair had turned white. What
had been at times hard and cold and grim about him had strangely
vanished in sweet temper and a vacant-mindedness that held him
longer as the days passed. For hours, it seemed, Ladd would bend
over his checkerboard and never make a move. It mattered not now
whether or not he had a partner. He was always glad of being
spoken to, as if he were called back from vague region of mind.
Jim Lash, the calmest, coolest, most nonchalant, best-humored
Westerner Gale had ever met, had by slow degrees lost that cheerful
character which would have been of such infinite good to his
companions, and always he sat broding, silently brooding.
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