ward as
though butting against a wind that would beat him back. "Go on, go on,"
he cried, sometimes addressing the mule, sometimes himself. "Go on, go
back, go back. I WILL go back." It was as though he were climbing a
hill that grew steeper with every stride. The strange impelling instinct
fought his advance yard by yard. By degrees the dentist's steps grew
slower; he stopped, went forward again cautiously, almost feeling his
way, like someone approaching a pit in the darkness. He stopped again,
hesitating, gnashing his teeth, clinching his fists with blind fury.
Suddenly he turned the mule about, and once more set his face to the
eastward.

"I can't," he cried aloud to the desert; "I can't, I can't. It's
stronger than I am. I CAN'T go back. Hurry now, hurry, hurry, hurry."

He hastened on furtively, his head and shoulders bent. At times one
could almost say he crouched as he pushed forward with long strides;
now and then he even looked over his shoulder. Sweat rolled from him,
he lost his hat, and the matted mane of thick yellow hair swept over his
forehead and shaded his small, twinkling eyes. At times, with a vague,
nearly automatic gesture, he reached his hand forward, the fingers
prehensile, and directed towards the horizon, as if he would clutch it
and draw it nearer; and at intervals he muttered, "Hurry, hurry, hurry
on, hurry on." For now at last McTeague was afraid.

His plans were uncertain. He remembered what Cribbens had said about the
Armagosa Mountains in the country on the other side of Death Valley. It
was all hell to get into that country, Cribbens had said, and not many
men went there, because of the terrible valley of alkali that barred
the way, a horrible vast sink of white sand and salt below even the sea
level, the dry bed, no doubt, of some prehistoric lake. But McTeague
resolved to make a circuit of the valley, keeping to the south, until he
should strike the Armagosa River. He would make a circuit of the valley
and come up on the other side. He would get into that country around
Gold Mountain in the Armagosa hills, barred off from the world by the
leagues of the red-hot alkali of Death Valley. "They" would hardly reach
him there. He would stay at Gold Mountain two or three months, and then
work his way down into Mexico.

McTeague tramped steadily forward, still descending the lower
irregularities of the Panamint Range. By nine o'clock the slope
flattened out abruptly; the hills were behind