"They're tough little devils," Bud observed hopefully. "We could take
it easy, traveling when it's coolest. And by packing light, and graining
the whole bunch--"
"Yeah. We can ease 'em through, I guess. It does seem as though it would
be foolish to hang on here any longer." Carefully as he made his tests,
Cash weighed the question of their going. "This last report kills any
chance of interesting capital to the extent of developing the claim on
a large enough scale to make it profitable. It's too long a haul to take
the ore out, and it's too spotted to justify any great investment in
machinery to handle it on the ground. And," he added with an undernote
of fierceness, "it's a terrible place for man or beast to stay in,
unless the object to be attained is great enough to justify enduring the
hardships."
"You said a mouthful, Cash. Well, can you leave your seven radishes and
three hunches of lettuce and pull out--say at daybreak?" Bud turned to
him with some eagerness.
Cash grinned sourly. "When it's time to go, seven radishes can't stop
me. No, nor a whole row of 'em--if there was a whole row."
"And you watered 'em copiously too," Bud murmured, with the corners
of his mouth twitching. "Well, I guess we might as well tie up the
livestock. I'm going to give 'em all a feed of rolled oats, Cash. We
can get along without, and they've got to have something to put a little
heart in 'em. There's a moon to-night--how about starting along
about midnight? That would put us in the Bend early in the forenoon
to-morrow."
"Suits me," said Cash. "Now I've made up my mind about going, I can't go
too soon."
"You're on. Midnight sees us started." Bud went out with ropes to catch
and tie up the burros and their two saddle horses. And as he went, for
the first time in two months he whistled; a detail which Cash noted with
a queer kind of smile.
Midnight and the moon riding high in the purple bowl of sky sprinkled
thick with stars; with a little, warm wind stirring the parched weeds as
they passed; with the burros shuffling single file along the dim trail
which was the short cut through the hills to the Bend, Ed taking the
lead, with the camp kitchen wabbling lumpily on his back, Cora bringing
up the rear with her skinny colt trying its best to keep up, and with
no pack at all; so they started on the long, long journey to the green
country.
A silent journey it was for the most part. The moon and the starry
bowl of sky had laid their spell upon the desert, and the two men rode
wordlessly, filled with vague, unreasoning regret that they must go.
Months they had spent with the desert, learning well every little
varying mood; cursing it for its blistering heat and its sand storms
and its parched thirst and its utter, blank loneliness. Loving it too,
without ever dreaming that they loved. To-morrow they would face the
future with the past dropping farther and farther behind. To-night it
rode with them.