t the cabin. Out
of the question. Forward, it was one shortish drive to the next hole. If
that were dry, he could forsake the trail and make a try by a short-cut
for that Tinaja place. And he must start soon, too, as soon as the
animals could stand it, and travel by night and rest when the sun got
bad. What business had October to be hot like this? So in the darkness
he mounted again, and noon found him with eyes shut under a yucca. It
was here that he held a talk with Lolita. They were married, and sitting
in a room with curtains that let you see flowers growing outside by the
window, as he had always intended. Lolita said to him that there was no
fool like an old fool, and he was telling her that love could make a man
more a fool than age, when she threw the door open, letting in bright
light, and said, "No proofs." The bright light was the real sun coming
round the yucca on his face, and he sat up and saw the desert. No cows
were here, but he noticed the roughened hides and sunk eyes of his own
beasts, and spoke to them.

"Cheer up, Jeff! Stonewall!" He stopped at the pain. It was in his lips
and mouth. He put up his hand, and the feel of his tongue frightened
him. He looked round to see what country he was in, and noted the signs
that it was not so very far now. The blue crags of the islands were
showing, and the blue sterile sky spread over them and the ceaseless
sunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life in
the naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearest
island, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base away to
a transparent fringe.

"Like a lump of sugar melts in hot tod," remarked Genesmere, aloud, and
remembered his thickened mouth again. "I can stand it off for a while
yet, though--if they can travel." His mules looked at him when he
came--looked when he tightened their cinches. "I know, Jeff," he said,
and inspected the sky. "No heaven's up there. Nothing's back of that
thing, unless it's hell."

[Illustration: "'YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK THIS WAY. YOU'RE ALONE'"]

He got the animals going, and the next 'dobe-hole was like the
last, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. "You didn't fool
me," said Genesmere, addressing the mud. "I knew you'd be dry." His
eye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. "That foreman
was not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country," he
continued to the hole, his tongue clacking as it made h