blood. He followed through the sand until he came to that place where the expriest had circled upon himself and lay hissing at him from his place of cover.
Did you do for them lad?
He raised his hand.
Aye. I heard the shots all three. The fool as well, aye lad?
He didnt answer.
Good lad, hissed the expriest. He’d bound up his neck in his shirt and he was naked to the waist and he squatted among those rancid pickets and eyed the sun. The shadows were long on the dunes and in the shadow the bones of the beasts that had died there lay skewed in a curious congress of garbled armatures upon the sands. They’d close to two hours till dark and the expriest said so. They lay under the boardlike hide of a dead ox and listened to the judge calling to them. He called out points of jurisprudence, he cited cases. He expounded upon those laws pertaining to property rights in beasts mansuete and he quoted from cases of attainder insofar as he reckoned them germane to the corruption of blood in the prior and felonious owners of the horses now dead among the bones. Then he spoke of other things. The expriest leaned to the kid. Dont listen, he said.
I aint listenin.
Stop your ears.
Stop yours.
The priest cupped his hands over his ears and looked at the kid. His eyes were bright from the bloodloss and he was possessed of a great earnestness. Do it, he whispered. Do you think he speaks to me?
The kid turned away. He marked the sun squatting at the western rim of the waste and they spoke no more until it was dark and then they rose and made their way out.
They stole up from the basin and set off across the shallow dunes and they looked a last time back at the valley where flickering in the wind at the edge of the revetment stood the judge’s nightfire for all to see. They did not speculate as to what it fed upon for fuel and they were well advanced on the desert before the moon rose.
There were wolves and jackals in that region and they cried all the forepart of the night until the moon came up and then they ceased as if surprised by its rising. Then they began again. The pilgrims were weak from their wounds. They lay down to rest but never for long and never without scanning the skyline to the east for any figure intruded upon it and they shivered in the barren desert wind coming out of whatever godless quadrant cold and sterile and bearing news of nothing at all. When day came they made their way to a slight rise on that endless flat and squatted in the loose shale and watched the sun’s rising. It was cold and the expriest in his rags and his collar of blood hugged himself. On this small promontory they slept and when they woke it was midmorning and the sun well advanced. They sat up and looked out. Coming toward them over the plain in the middle distance they could see the figure of the judge, the figure of the fool.
XXI
Desert castaways – The backtrack – A hideout – The wind takes a side – The judge returns – An address – Los Dieguenos – San Felipe – Hospitality of the savages – Into the mountains – Grizzlies – San Diego – The sea.
The kid looked at Tobin but the expriest sat without expression. He was drawn and wretchedlooking and the approaching travelers seemed to evoke in him no recognition. He raised his head slightly and he spoke without looking at the kid. Go on, he said. Save yourself.
The kid took the water bottle from the shales and unstoppered it and drank and handed it across. The expriest drank and they sat watching and then they rose and turned and set out again.
They were much reduced by their wounds and their hunger and they made a poor show as they staggered onward. By noon their water was gone and they sat studying the barrenness about. A wind blew down from the north. Their mouths were dry. The desert upon which they were entrained was desert absolute and it was devoid of feature altogether and there was nothing to mark their progress upon it. The earth fell away on every side equally in its arcature and by these limits were they circumscribed and of them were they locus. They rose and went on. The sky was luminous. There was no trace to follow other than the bits of cast-off left by travelers even to the bones of men drifted out of their graves in the scalloped sands. In the afternoon the terrain began to rise before them and at the crest of a shallow esker they stood and looked back to see the judge much as before some two miles distant on the plain. They went on.
The approach to any watering place in that desert was marked by the carcasses of perished animals in increasing number and so it was now, as if the wells were ringed about by some hazard lethal to creatures. The travelers looked back. The judge was out of sight beyond the rise. Before them lay the whitened boards of a wagon and further on the shapes of mule and ox with the hide scoured bald as canvas by the constant abrasion of the sand.
The kid stood studying this place and then he backtracked some hundred yards and stood looking down at his shallow footprints in the sand. He looked upon the drifted slope of the esker which they had descended and he knelt and held his hand against the ground and he listened to the faint silica hiss of the wind.
When he lifted his hand there was a thin ridge of sand that had drifted against it and he watched this ridge slowly vanish before him.
The expriest when he returned to him presented a grave appearance. The kid knelt and studied him where he sat.
We got to hide, he said.
Hide?
Yes.
Where do you aim to hide?
Here. We’ll hide here.
You cant hide, lad.
We can hide.
You think he cant follow your track?
The wind’s taking it. It’s gone from the slope yonder.
Gone?
Ever trace.
The expriest shook his head.
Come on. We got to get goin.
You cant hide.
Get up.
The expriest shook his head. Ah lad, he said.
Get up, said the kid.
Go on, go on. He waved his hand.
The kid spoke to him. He aint nothin. You told me so yourself. Men are made of the dust of the earth. You said it was no pair … pair …
Parable.
No parable. That it was a naked fact and the judge was a man like all men.
Face him down then, said the expriest. Face him down if he is so.
And him with a rifle and me with a pistol. Him with two rifles. Get up from there.
Tobin rose. He stood unsteadily, he leaned against the kid. They set out, veering off from the drifted track and down past the wagon.
They passed the first of the racks of bones and went on to where a pair of mules lay dead in the traces and here the kid knelt with a piece of board and began to scoop them a shelter, watching the skyline to the east as he worked. Then they lay prone in the lee of those sour bones like sated scavengers and awaited the arrival of the judge and the passing of the judge if he would so pass.
