ke
it in turns. It is warm; we do not need our clothes--ah!"--for Adan was
snoring.

Roldan was very tired but not sleepy. His brain, indeed, seemed
unusually alert, and he got up after a time and prowled about, pistol
in hand. He had been in solitudes before, solitude of plain and valley
and mountain; but there was something in his present surroundings that
reminded him of nothing he had heard of or seen. It was not only the
intense stillness, unbroken by so much as the flutter of a leaf, nor
even the vast expanse. The place seemed to possess a character of its
own, and its character was sinister and forbidding. Once or twice he
had been in the cemetery of the Mission near his father's rancho, and
the ugly feeling that he stood too close to death came back to him;
why, he could not define. There was no sign of a cross anywhere; but he
felt that he stood in a dead world, nevertheless. Once the ground
quivered beneath his feet, and the horrible idea occurred to him that
Southern California had been swallowed by an earthquake, and that only
this desolation was left.

He went back to his comrade, who slept soundly beside the horses, also
extended and breathing deeply. It was nearly morning when he woke Adan,
so little aptitude had his brain for sleep. But when Adan sat up he
fell asleep almost immediately, and when he awoke the sun was high.

XXII

Roldan raised himself on his elbow and looked about him. Adan was some
quarter of a mile away, approaching him, leading the mustangs. Cleaving
the horizon on four sides was a vast plain. On it was not a tree, nor
even a hut. Here and there were clumps of palms and cacti, as stark as
if cut from pale green stone. At vast intervals were short, isolated
mountains, known in the vernacular as "buttes." On the ground was not
the withered remnant of a blade of grass; but there were many fissures,
and some of them were deep and wide. Of the things that crawl and
scamper and fly there was no sign, not even a hole in the ground; for
even reptiles must have food to eat, and there was nothing here to
sustain man nor beast. The fleckless sky was a deep, hot blue; a
blood-red sun toiled heavily toward the zenith.

"Adan!" shouted Roldan; he was suddenly mad for sound of any sort. A
discouraged "Halloa!" came promptly back.

Roldan dressed himself rapidly. His clothes were quite dry; indeed the
very atmosphere of this strange beautiful place was so dry that it
seemed to crumble in