alkali and washes of silt farther out, the wind-ploughed canyons and
dust-encumbered ridges ranging west and east, the scalloped slopes of the
flat tableland rising low, the tips of volcanic peaks leading the eye
beyond to veils and vapors hovering over blue clefts and dim line of
level lanes, and so on, and on, out to the vast unknown. Then Hare
grasped a little of its meaning. It was a sun-painted, sun-governed
world. Here was deep and majestic Nature eternal and unchangeable. But
it was only through Eschtah's eyes that he saw its parched slopes, its
terrifying desolateness, its sleeping death.

When the old chieftain's lips opened Hare anticipated the austere speech,
the import that meant only pain to him, and his whole inner being seemed
to shrink.

"The White Prophet's child of red blood is lost to him," said Eschtah.
"The Flower of the Desert is as a grain of drifting sand."



XIII
THE SOMBRE LINE


AUGUST NAAB hoped that Mescal might have returned in his absence; but to
Hare such hope was vain. The women of the oasis met them with gloomy
faces presaging bad news, and they were reluctant to tell it. Mescal's
flight had been forgotten in the sterner and sadder misfortune that had
followed.

Snap Naab's wife lay dangerously ill, the victim of his drunken frenzy.