We are in the Mojave desert,
my friend."
Adan, whose mouth was still wide open, sat down and rolled his eyes from
east to west. "Caramba!" he ejaculated finally.
"I could say a good deal more than Caramba. All that I have heard of
this Mojave comes back to me. There is no water on it, no living thing
but half choked cacti and stunted palms. Men who are lost on it go mad
and die of thirst--"
"Ay, yi, yi!"
"Si, senor. However, it might be much worse. It is winter, not summer,--
when the heat kills in a day; we have food and a little wine; we are
young and very strong; we have not come so many leagues that we cannot
walk back. And we have each other. Think, were we alone!"
"Yes, it might be worse," said Adan, "but all the same it might be six
or eight leagues to the northwest better. And that city? What was it?
Where has it gone?"
"I do not know." Privately he believed that it had been a glimpse of
heaven, and was disturbed lest it might have been a portent of death.
But his mind was too active, his nature too independent to sit down
under superstition. If he died on the desert, it would not be through
lack of effort to get out of it.
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