“I am Johannes Verne,” I said aloud. “I am not afraid.” Then the strangeness came. Suddenly I stopped and looked all around. The sand was almost white, the rocks that had seemed black now were brown, the sky was very blue and there were no clouds. I should have been afraid, but I was not. All about me seemed familiar, although I had seen none of it before, and had ridden through it only in darkness.
I sat down on a flat rock. This was where I belonged. My mother had come to love the desert, my father had lived with it, in it, had loved it and its people. Maybe that was it, but there was something more, too. I felt that I was born for this, to live here, to be a part of it.
When I began to walk again, I did not hurry. Soon I must seek shade, and before night I should have to find water. Yet the strangeness was upon me, the feeling that I was not alone, a feeling that the desert was a friendly place. A jackrabbit started up and bounded away, then stopped, sat up, and looked at me. Then I saw where a snake had crossed the sandy trail, and some kind of bug had crossed over the snake’s trail. It was growing hot. In the sky, no longer quite so blue, but misty with heat, there was a buzzard. He had seen me and was watching.
“Go away!” I said aloud. “I am not your dinner!” The buzzard could not hear me, but he would not have believed me. I remembered what my father had said, that the buzzard has only to wait. In the end, we all come to him or his like.
I began to look for shade. There was none. I thought of pulling brush and piling it over a place where I could crawl for shade, but everything was stiff and dry and covered with thorns or stickers.
The shadows of the Joshua trees were short. It would be nearing midday and there was no shade. My mouth was very dry. I picked up a little pebble and held it in my hand until it was not so hot, and then put it in my mouth. It would help for a little while. I stumbled.
Some kind of small bird had run ahead of me in the sand. Far off, to the south and a little west, there seemed to be mountains. Were they our mountains? They must be. How far I had walked, I did not know. I sat down again. By the shadows it was midday, and I had been walking since just before daylight. Jacob Finney had talked to me about the desert, as had Mr. Farley and Mr. Kelso, and of course, my father. I knew I must find shade and rest. A man or a boy could not live long without water.
The trail of tracks I was following dipped down into a dry wash, and the opposite side was steep. By the time I climbed out of the wash, I was very tired. And then I saw the rocks. It was only a small clump of rocks, but they were heaped together and one of them made a shelf that held a little shadow. When I was closer, I could see a hole behind it. Carefully, because of snakes, I inspected it. Taking a stick, and careful before I picked it up to be sure it was a stick and not a snake, I prodded into the shallow hole. Nothing … Crawling in, there was room enough for me to lie down. A crack toward the back let a small breeze come through. It felt good. Finally I must have slept, because when I opened my eyes it was cooler and I could see the sun was down. Crawling out, I looked all around. There was nothing but the desert. Keeping the stick with which I had prodded for snakes, I started to walk.
A little sand had sifted into the tracks. They were no longer so plain. Suddenly I was afraid. What if the tracks disappeared? Stopping, I remembered what Jacob Finney had said. “Always take your bearings. Locate yourself.” I knew where the sun had gone down, which would be west. So I was facing south. Far away I could see a jagged point of rock, and it was due south. Walking on, night came, and I chose a star that hung in the south right over my point of rocks; then I walked on.
The desert is cold at night, and soon I was cold, but I walked on, stumbling once in a while. A coyote howled and I took a firmer grip on my stick. It was a good strong stick.
My mouth was very dry. Sometimes it was hard to swallow. I took deep breaths of the cool, clear air, which seemed almost like water, it was so fresh. Once I almost fell asleep walking. When I found a flat rock, I sat down. The coyotes seemed close, and I wondered if they were following me. Somebody had said they did not eat people. My father laughed at that. They were carnivores, he said, and would eat anything available. They were afraid of the man-smell because it meant danger, but they would attack anything they might eat if it could not fight back. If a man or a child is helpless, my father said, he might be eaten. Jacob Finney had agreed:
“No animal has any special respect for man,” he said. “It is just that they have learned to fear. Once they lose their fear, a man has to be careful.” Clutching my stick, I waited. If one came close, I would hit him. Bending over, I gathered some rocks. They were black against the white sand. I piled them beside me on the flat rock.
Sometimes I dozed, yet I tried to stay awake, and several times I heard something moving, but I couldn’t see anything. A small wind stirred, rustling the dry leaves on the brush. Something stirred again, closer. I picked up a rock and threw it hard. After that I heard no sound. A long time later I awakened from dozing and heard a soft sound, so I took my stick and hit the brush near me; then I threw another stone into the darkness. In stories, they always spoke of gleaming eyes peering from the darkness. I saw no eyes. I heard only the soft rustling of something moving in the darkness. When the first gray light came, I stood up. I was very stiff, and very tired. Also I was hungry, but mostly I wanted a drink. The coolness of the night had made it better, but I wanted a drink, I needed a drink. Papa had said one could get a drink from a barrel cactus, but I did not see any.
Just stiff, dry wood and sometimes whitish-looking grass. My point of rock was gone. My star was gone. I could not find the tracks, yet I could see where the sun was rising and I started off to the south. I had not gone far when I saw a coyote track in the sand. It was a fresh track. When I topped a small rise, I sat down. My legs ached and I was very tired. I put a pebble in my mouth again, but it did not work very well. The sun had come up, and it was very hot.
Heat waves shimmered on the desert, and far ahead I could see a blue lake that was only mirage. There were rocks ahead, and more brush. Beyond them I could see the mountains, the San Jacintos they were called, but they seemed far, far away. Then, walking on, I found the tracks again. Following them, I fell down, and when I got up from the sand, my hands were bloody from the gravel. There were other, older tracks. I was on some kind of a trail, and it seemed to dip down into the hotter desert, but beyond were the mountains. My tongue was dry and I could not swallow. My eyes hurt and I was very hot. I wanted to lie down, but the sand was like a hot stove.
For a time there was a sound, a drumming sound, and then it became the sound of horses, and I turned around.
A half-dozen riders were coming at me. Was it a dream? My eyes blinked slowly, and I frowned, trying to make them out. They were only a blur against the shimmering heat waves, and the horses seemed to have legs enormously long, but that was the heat waves again.
They came up, coming out of the heat waves and the dust, and the foremost rider had a wooden leg.
They pulled up, and the man with the peg leg said, “Holy Jesus! It’s Verne’s boy!”