The mayor domo had provided
them abundantly, and once more they looked upon the world with hopeful
eyes.
"But we must sleep," said Roldan, "and it is not going to be easy for
mind or body--if there are rattlers about--with no fire. We must take
it in turns. It is warm; we do not need our clothes--ah!"--for Adan was
snoring.
Roldan was very tired but not sleepy. His brain, indeed, seemed
unusually alert, and he got up after a time and prowled about, pistol in
hand. He had been in solitudes before, solitude of plain and valley and
mountain; but there was something in his present surroundings that
reminded him of nothing he had heard of or seen. It was not only the
intense stillness, unbroken by so much as the flutter of a leaf, nor
even the vast expanse. The place seemed to possess a character of its
own, and its character was sinister and forbidding. Once or twice he had
been in the cemetery of the Mission near his father's rancho, and the
ugly feeling that he stood too close to death came back to him; why, he
could not define. There was no sign of a cross anywhere; but he felt
that he stood in a dead world, nevertheless. Once the ground quivered
beneath his feet, and the horrible idea occurred to him that Southern
California had been swallowed by an earthquake, and that only this
desolation was left.
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