Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/93

Rh hot and cold air inflamed nose and ears and throat and eyes. At midday the thermometer might be a hundred and thirty degrees in the shade, sunset would see it down to fifty and midnight to freezing. All round the dock they fought the elements and the elements remained unfriendly, hostile, resistant.

The three of them—for the Desert Rat, Diamond Dick, paid no attention to such matters—became afraid of the things that lay out in the broiling sun of the desert spaces, not with the cowardice that retreats, but with the fear that respects and recognizes danger. Sidewinders—rattlesnakes with horned projections over their devilish eyes—pichucuates, true asps, gray and stubby and deadliest of snakes, hairy tarantulas, pinkish-yellow Gila monsters, flabby, bloated things, leprous with black patches. Between these things that crawled and the gaunt ravens sailing over the wan landscape there seemed a link, a partnership of death, the sharing of secrets concerning the beings that faltered and fell and rotted on the sand.

Fifteen miles a day, they found, was good travelling. The second afternoon proved the value of having along Diamond Dick, whose real name was Harvey. They were nearing the chaos of crags and peaks that marked the southern edge of the Mogollon Mesa, whose purple rimrock seemed less than two miles away, though Harvey assured them that it was more than twenty. The soil under their feet was caked, flaking off under the sun. Suddenly Harvey grasped at Healy's arm and pulled him hastily aside. The heat