At that moment McTeague was already eight miles away from the camp, going steadily eastward.  He was descending the lowest spurs of the Panamint hills, following an old and faint cattle trail.  Before him he drove his mule, laden with blankets, provisions for six days, Cribben’s rifle, and a canteen full of water.  Securely bound to the pommel of the saddle was the canvas sack with its precious five thousand dollars, all in twenty-dollar gold pieces.  But strange enough in that horrid waste of sand and sage was the object that McTeague himself persistently carried—­the canary in its cage, about which he had carefully wrapped a couple of old flour-bags.

At about five o’clock that morning McTeague had crossed several trails which seemed to be converging, and, guessing that they led to a water hole, had followed one of them and had brought up at a sort of small sundried sink which nevertheless contained a little water at the bottom.  He had watered the mule here, refilled the canteen, and drank deep himself.  He had also dampened the old flour-sacks around the bird cage to protect the little canary as far as possible from the heat that he knew would increase now with every hour.  He had made ready to go forward again, but had paused irresolute again, hesitating for the last time.

“I’m a fool,” he growled, scowling back at the range behind him.  “I’m a fool.  What’s the matter with me?  I’m just walking right away from a million dollars.  I know it’s there.  No, by God!” he exclaimed, savagely, “I ain’t going to do it.  I’m going back.  I can’t leave a mine like that.”  He had wheeled the mule about, and had started to return on his tracks, grinding his teeth fiercely, inclining his head forward as though butting against a wind that would beat him back.  “Go on, go on,” he cried, sometimes addressing the mule, sometimes himself.  “Go on, go back, go back.  I will go back.”  It was as though he were climbing a hill that grew steeper with every stride.  The strange impelling instinct fought his advance yard by yard.  By degrees the dentist’s steps grew slower; he stopped, went forward again cautiously, almost feeling his way, like someone approaching a pit in the darkness.  He stopped again, hesitating, gnashing his teeth, clinching his fists with blind fury.  Suddenly he turned the mule about, and once more set his face to the eastward.

“I can’t,” he cried aloud to the desert; “I can’t, I can’t.  It’s stronger than I am.  I can’t go back.  Hurry now, hurry, hurry, hurry.”

He hastened on furtively, his head and shoulders bent.  At times one could almost say he crouched as he pushed forward with long strides; now and then he even looked over his shoulder.  Sweat rolled from him, he lost his hat, and the matted mane of thick yellow hair swept over his forehead and shaded his small, twinkling eyes.  At times, with a vague, nearly automatic gesture, he reached his hand forward, the fingers prehensile, and directed towards the horizon, as if he would clutch it and draw it nearer; and at intervals he muttered, “Hurry, hurry, hurry on, hurry on.”  For now at last McTeague was afraid.