Desert Gold | Page 9

usual.
They packed the burros and faced the north together.
Cameron experienced a singular exaltation. He had lightened his
comrade's burden. Wonderfully it came to him that he had also
lightened his own. From that hour it was not torment to think of Nell.
Walking with his comrade through the silent places, lying beside him
under the serene luminous light of the stars, Cameron began to feel the
haunting presence of invisible things that were real to him--phantoms
whispering peace. In the moan of the cool wind, in the silken seep of
sifting sand, in the distant rumble of a slipping ledge, in the faint rush
of a shooting star he heard these phantoms of peace coming with
whispers of the long pain of men at the last made endurable. Even in
the white noonday, under the burning sun, these phantoms came to be
real to him. In the dead silence of the midnight hours he heard them
breathing nearer on the desert wind--nature's voices of motherhood,
whispers of God, peace in the solitude.

IV
There came a morning when the sun shone angry and red through a dull,
smoky haze.
"We're in for sandstorms," said Cameron.
They had scarcely covered a mile when a desert-wide, moaning, yellow
wall of flying sand swooped down upon them. Seeking shelter in the
lee of a rock, they waited, hoping the storm was only a squall, such as

frequently whipped across the open places. The moan increased to a
roar, and the dull red slowly dimmed, to disappear in the yellow pall,
and the air grew thick and dark. Warren slipped the packs from the
burros. Cameron feared the sandstorms had arrived some weeks ahead
of their usual season.
The men covered their heads and patiently waited. The long hours
dragged, and the storm increased in fury. Cameron and Warren wet
scarfs with water from their canteens, and bound them round their faces,
and then covered their heads. The steady, hollow bellow of flying sand
went on. It flew so thickly that enough sifted down under the shelving
rock to weight the blankets and almost bury the men. They were
frequently compelled to shake off the sand to keep from being borne to
the ground. And it was necessary to keep digging out the packs. The
floor of their shelter gradually rose higher and higher. they tried to eat,
and seemed to be grinding only sand between their teeth. They lost the
count of time. They dared not sleep, for that would have meant being
buried alive. The could only crouch close to the leaning rock, shake off
the sand, blindly dig out their packs, and every moment gasp and cough
and choke to fight suffocation.
The storm finally blew itself out. It left the prospectors heavy and
stupid for want of sleep. Their burros had wandered away, or had been
buried in the sand. Far as eye could reach the desert had marvelously
changed; it was now a rippling sea of sand dunes. Away to the north
rose the peak that was their only guiding mark. They headed toward it,
carrying a shovel and part of their packs.
At noon the peak vanished in the shimmering glare of the desert. The
prospectors pushed on, guided by the sun. In every wash they tried for
water. With the forked peach branch in his hands Warren always
succeeded in locating water. They dug, but it lay too deep. At length,
spent and sore, they fell and slept through that night and part of the
next day. Then they succeeded in getting water, and quenched their
thirst, and filled the canteens, and cooked a meal.
The burning day found them in an interminably wide plain, where there
was no shelter from the fierce sun. The men were exceedingly careful

with their water, though there was absolute necessity of drinking a little
every hour. Late in the afternoon they came to a canyon that they
believed was the lower end of the one in which they had last found
water. For hours they traveled toward its head, and, long after night had
set, found what they sought. Yielding to exhaustion, they slept, and
next day were loath to leave the waterhole. Cool night spurred them on
with canteens full and renewed strength.
Morning told Cameron that they had turned back miles into the desert,
and it was desert new to him. The red sun, the increasing heat, and
especially the variety and large size of the cactus plants warned
Cameron that he had descended to a lower level. Mountain peaks
loomed on all sides, some near, others distant; and one, a blue spur,
splitting the glaring sky far to the north, Cameron thought he
recognized as a landmark. The ascent toward it was heartbreaking, not
in steepness,