One touch of a woman's sympathy, after her starved years, was too much for Charley. She burst into deep drawn sobs. Elsa, motioning Roger away, put her arm about the girl and led her into the tent.
Roger paced up and down in the sand for a while, listening to the low despairing sobs from the tent. Then he unsaddled Peter and put a huge bottle of water to heat. He had heard somewhere that women took great comfort in a cup of tea.
Roger passed rather a restless night. He had put Elsa's cot which she never had used, in the living tent so that Elsa could be close to her two patients, and himself put in the night in Gustav's shack which was built against the kitchen tent.
It was early July and the summer's heat was at its height. Three times between midnight and dawn Roger scratched a match and looked at the thermometer. It never registered below 118°. Even the night wind did not rise. The silence of the desert was complete as though torridity had overwhelmed every other aspect of nature. The stars were magnificent and for an hour or so, hoping to find the air outside cooler, Roger put a blanket on the work bench near the condenser and lay there, his face to the sky.
He wanted to keep his mind fastened lucidly on his engine problem, but he found it impossible to put away the events of the day. Dick's bestial voice, Charley's white, proud face, little Felicia's clinging arms, Charley's sobs from the living tent and her bitter words concerning his temper. These words he pondered unwillingly for some time, following with his eye the constellations of the Great Bear. Finally he rolled on his face with a groan. Perhaps she was right. God knew though that he'd fought the red demon within him. After a time he rolled back. Felicia had not wakened for her supper. She had slept straight through. It was a great pity, he thought, that she should have seen Dick drunk, that she should have seen him knock Charley down. He wondered if there were any way he could make her forget it. Then with a deep flush in the starlight he wished to God she had not seen him lose his temper like a fool. Felicia! tender, high strung little Felicia!
At last when the stars were growing dim, Roger fell asleep. He rose at sunrise, and went up to the ranch. Dick was lying on the adobe floor of the tent house, evidently very sick and very cross.
"How'd I come in here? Send Charley to me!" he snarled.