sands with open mouth, protruding tongue, black face and
sightless eyes. The picture sent a thrill of horror through him and
moved his dizzy, flagging brain to fresh resolution. He stumbled on
through the blazing, parching, cruel heat, sometimes falling and lying
motionless for a time, then pulling himself up and going on with will
newly braced by the fear that he might not rise again. Once he sank,
groaning, his courage quite broken, and mumbled to himself that he
could go no farther. As he fell the loud whirr of a rattlesnake
sounded from the bush of greasewood beside him. Instinctive fear
instantly mettled his nerves and he sprang up and leaped away from the
hidden enemy. The fear of this danger, of which he had not thought
before, steadied his brain once more and helped him bend his will
unyieldingly to the task of going on and on and on, forever and
forever, through the burning, blasting heat.

Often he turned from his course and wandered aimlessly about in wrong
directions, forgetting for a time his objective point and remembering
only that he must keep going. Once he came upon human bones, with
shreds of clothing lying about, and stood staring at them, his eyes
held by the fascination of horror. Finally he forced himself to move
on, and after he had tramped through the scorching sand for a long
time, he found himself staring again at the bleaching skeleton.
Through his heat-dazed brain the thought made way that the fascination
of this white, nameless thing had cast a spell upon him and had drawn
him back to die here, where his bones might lie beside these that had
whitened this desert spot for so many months. Perhaps this poor
creature's soul hovered over his death place and in its loneliness and
desolation had fastened ghoulish talons into his and would pin him
down to die in the same spot. The idea took instant possession of his
bewildered mind and filled him with such quaking fear and horror that
he turned and ran with new strength and speed, as if the clawing,
clamoring ghost were really at his heels.

By mere blind luck he ran in the right direction, and when next he had
conscious knowledge of his surroundings he was lying on the ground at
the mouth of the Fernandez pass, well up in the mountains, with the
white moonlight all about him. Dazedly he thought it would be better
for him to lie still and rest, but from somewhere back in his mind
came the conviction that there was something upon which he must kee