erce the flesh; the heights and
depths, unscalable and unplumbed. And over all the sun, red and burning.

The parched plants of the desert fought for life, growing far apart,
sending enormous roots deep to pierce the sand and split the rock for
moisture, arming every leaf with a barbed thorn or poisoned sap, never
thriving and ever thirsting.

The creatures of the desert endured the sun and lived without water, and
were at endless war. The hawk had a keener eye than his fellow of more
fruitful lands, sharper beak, greater spread of wings, and claws of
deeper curve. For him there was little to eat, a rabbit now, a rock-rat
then; nature made his swoop like lightning and it never missed its aim.
The gaunt wolf never failed in his sure scent, in his silent hunt. The
lizard flicked an invisible tongue into the heart of a flower; and the
bee he caught stung with a poisoned sting. The battle of life went to
the strong.

So the desert trained each of its wild things to survive. No eye of
the desert but burned with the flame of the sun. To kill or to escape
death--that was the dominant motive. To fight barrenness and heat--that
was stern enough, but each creature must fight his fellow.

What then of the men who drifted into the desert and survived? They must
of necessity endure the wind and heat, the drouth and famine; they must
grow lean and hard, keen-eyed and silent. The weak, the humble, the
sacrificing must be winnowed from among them. As each man developed he
took on some aspect of the desert--Holderness had the amber clearness
of its distances in his eyes, its deceit in his soul; August Naab, the
magnificence of the desert-pine in his giant form, its strength in his
heart; Snap Naab, the cast of the hawk-beak in his face, its cruelty
in his nature. But all shared alike in the common element of
survival--ferocity. August Naab had subdued his to the promptings of
a Christ-like spirit; yet did not his very energy, his wonderful
tirelessness, his will to achieve, his power to resist, partake of that
fierceness? Moreover, after many struggles, he too had been overcome by
the desert's call for blood. His mystery was no longer a mystery. Always
in those moments of revelation which he disclaimed, he had seen himself
as faithful to the desert in the end.

Hare's slumbers that night were broken. He dreamed of a great gray
horse leaping in the sky from cloud to cloud with the lightning and the
thunder under his hoofs, the storm