38succeeded in knocking down some of the fig-like growths.

38

When he had eaten them he stretched himself upon the sand, filled the deputy’s pipe, and lighted it with one of the precious matches. The unwonted luxury brought him comfort, and ease of mind. He smoked slowly, making the most of it in delicious relaxation, his head in the shade, his weary, sick body basking in the heat of desert and sunlight.

Lying thus there presently spread out before his eyes the sudden vision of a great, island-dotted sea. The surface of the water dimpled and sparkled in the sun; the islands shone jewel-like with verdure, an exquisite suggestion of rich color was over it all.

His eye was not deceived, though his mind half accepted the vision. He knew that it was a mirage, but he lay for a long time watching its changing beauty, a half-amused sense of superiority to illusion ministering pleasantly to his pride. The scene was so very like what it seemed to be.

Suddenly, from the surface of the sea rose a monstrous thing, huge, formidable, portentous, and endowed with motion. Gard turned upon his side, with a gasp. The mystic sea still wavered in the distance, but the shape was no part of it.

An instant he studied it, then sank back with a 39sigh of relief. The apparition, upon scrutiny, had resolved itself into a little wild burro, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, passing across the face of the mirage. It was such a germane little shape, this familiar of the desert, that he was cheered by the sight of it. The next instant he noted a tarantula, hairy, vicious, glaring at him from a tiny eminence of sand.

39

Acting upon impulse, Gard hurled at it the rounded stone with which he had crushed the mesquite beans. The missile struck the sand close beside the tarantula and the huge spider sprang upon it in a frenzy of stupid ferocity. The man laughed silently, a laugh not good to see.

A shadow floated across the plain, and then another. The man glanced upward, to see three or four great black forms circling against the blue.

“You would, eh?” he shrieked, springing to his feet. “Yah! Not yet, you devils! I’m not dead yet!”

He shook his fist skyward at the huge, waiting birds.

“I’m alive yet!” he yelled. “You don’t 

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