Then he set off again.
Peering into the orange blaze of the sun he couldn't find the hills he'd picked out for steerage.
The hills swam into his thinking again. He made a dogged search and saw them grayly back of him, away off to the south. He had to wrestle this around a while before he got the sense of it, before he was able to realize he must have come farther than he'd been minded to suppose. He hopefully reflected he was probably not more than a couple of miles off his goal—that eastern drop to the floor of the roughs where he'd lost Bathsheba and where Brownwater Bill had said they would meet. Not even the astonishing discovery of the crazy staggering look of his tracks was able entirely to eradicate the notion.
He could be very near. This was rough-looking country filled with swirls of fluted sand, the very convolutions of which might tend to hide from a man afoot any sign of the drop-off until he reached its brink. He began to look for the churned-up area where he'd made his fight and, with Brownwater's help, had escaped from the crew.
He couldn't find even one hoofprint, but in this surge of restored confidence refused to be shaken. Wind could have done that. He floundered on, topping ridge after ridge, his burning eyes encountering nothing but the mauve look of more sand ahead with the sun squatting on it like a disc of molten copper. He wouldn't let himself believe he was lost, not even when outcrops of rock began occasionally to show like broken ribs among the dunes.
Once, remembering the roan, he took another backward look, but the horse was gone, vanished in the immensity of darkening desolation. The air was still furnace hot. His throat was cotton dry. A terrible thirst began to plague him, cutting through all other miseries.
The sun's face was half-buried when he dragged the chin off his chest to go staggering on with his tatters of hope. In its failing light something clutched at his shins. He thought the land fell away until he felt the grate of sand between his teeth and realized it was only himself that had fallen. God, what luxury to be perfectly still! The blessed peace of resignation—but resignation was surrender. Another name for death.
He struggled onto an elbow, scowling back at the tangled look of his legs and the outcrop of rotten rock that had spilled him. With a sense of outrage he said: 'Son of a—!' and stopped, jaw sagging, his eyes about ready to pop from his head.
He clawed onto his knees and scrabbled back to the rock. When at last he stood up he was shaking all over. Like a man half asleep his fixed stare quartered the land. He had no remembrance of picking anything up but a chunk of the rock was in his hand. The rifle he'd been carrying was completely forgotten when he faced west again to go stumbling on.
It was almost full night when he came out on the rimrock and saw the dark gulf of the badlands below. Nothing stirred down there. No sound came up. The cliff-hung trail where he'd lost Bathsheba might be north of him or south. It was nobody's guess, and too stinking black to tell if the ground was scuffed or not.
Out of desperation he did a crazy thing. From a creosote bush he stripped an armful of branches, packed them back to the edge of the rim and put a match to them. It was a calculated risk. He had known the moment he found the bush he was in the wrong place, because where he had tangled with the Bender crew there had been no wood—they had had to use grass; and there was no grass here, only a few stunted bushes.
With a fascinated, more-than-half-defiant dread, he watched flames leap from the resinous branches, orange and blue, the explosive colors of grease. On this bare lip they could be seen for miles. Would they fetch Spangler's gunhawks or Brownwater Bill?
XIV
They found him all right.
This fat wood burned fast. He had to scurry about in the jump of his shadow, pulling up more bushes or see the blaze die before he got any good from it. When he ran out of the finger-thin branches the fire burned down to a bed of bright coals. But he kept on moving, around and around the still-red eye of it, knowing the need to make sure he was seen.
Spangler, Duke and company, if they saw and had managed to get hold of fresh mounts, would investigate whether he showed himself or not; but Brownwater, having Bender and the girls on his mind, would likely prove more cautious. He would have to see Rafe before he'd risk coming in. So Rafe kept tramping, half out of his head with the wear and the strain of it and scared, by God, the man would run anyway.
He was afraid even to think what he would do if Bill did. In his present shape, afoot, without water and half starved besides, armed only with a belt gun and so dang bone-weary he could scarcely stand up, he'd have no more chance than a June frost in hell's kitchen.
He heard the strike of shod hoofs on stone, and whirled, stumbling away from the coals, snatching his pistol as he plunged into the blackness.
'That you, Rafe?'
It came up from below, Rafe almost collapsing in the shock of relief. It had to be Brownwater—nobody else wheezed like that.
An unreasoning anger rushed tumultuously through him, all he had undergone feeding this fury as he pictured Bill lallygaggin' with the girls, comfortable and safe as a frolic of church mice. Filled with it he growled, 'Get 'em on up here an' hurry it up!'
The shod hoofs, going away, squandered no time in stealth. Rafe dropped, utterly spent, yet too feverishly filled with the whirl of his emotions to take any rest from it. He was up again pacing, when in the enfolding grip of deep quiet, hoofs pocked the night somewhere off to the left. One of the approaching animals nickered, and he came around, staring, on stiffening hips, certain even in the thick of this black there were more than two horses. He listened, canted forward, mouth open, heart thudding.
'It's only us,' Bunny said, so calm he could have shouted. 'Bill found your mare, and most of the grub that went off with your pack horse. Why don't you build that fire up a little?'
Why didn't he go stick his goddamn head in it! Rafe said, furious, 'We're headin' for town—'
'Town!' Brownwater bleated like a scalded pig. 'Gawd a'mighty! Sun cooked your brains, boy?' and Luce cried bitterly, 'Alph Chilton—'
'There's bigger things than Alph Chilton involved!' He could see well enough to know the mare when she
