gone. Presently he felt
the effects of the tea and he stood up, ready to go on.

"It is no use trying to find the road again," he mused. "It would be
just so much lost time and effort. I'll just keep my eye on the pass
and go directly toward it, as nearly as I can."

He tried to eat more of the beans, but they stuck in his parched
throat. The tin was so hot that it burned his fingers, and, believing
they would be of no more use to him, he threw them away. The draught
of tea had much refreshed him and he started across the trackless
waste of sand and alkali with renewed determination.

He tramped on and on, the sun blazed down from a cloudless sky and
beat upon the level plain, and the sand, filled with heat, threw back
the rays into the scorching air. The heat seemed to fill the plain as
if it were a deep, transparent lake of some hot, shimmering liquid. At
a little distance every object loomed through the heat-haze distorted,
elongated and wavering. The hot sand burned Wellesly's feet through
his boots. The notion seized him that if he touched his body anywhere
it would blister his fingers. Even the blood in his veins felt fiery
hot and as if it were ready to burst through its channels. The sun
seemed to follow him and blaze down upon him with the malicious
persecution of a personal enemy. He shook his fist and swore at the
ball of fire.

For a long time he kept his eyes resolutely upon the Fernandez pass
and would look neither to left nor right. But after a while his brain
grew dizzy and his determination faltered. He stopped and looked
about him. Off to one side he thought he saw a lake, lying blue and
limpid in a circlet of gray sand, and he ran panting toward it,
reaching out his hands, and ready to plunge into its cool depths. He
ran and ran, until he stumbled and fell with exhaustion. It happened
that he lay in the shadow of a big clump of greasewood, and after a
little he revived and sat up. Then he rose and looked all about--and
knew that the longed-for lake was only the lying cheat of the desert
sands. He fastened his eyes again upon the mountain pass and trudged
on over the burning waste and through the burning heat, mumbling oaths
of threat and anger. His tongue seemed to fill his whole mouth, and
tongue and mouth and throat burned like red-hot metal.

The stories he had heard from Jim and Haney constantly haunted him. He
could not drive them away. In imagination he saw himself lying on the
white, hot