“All right, honey?” asked Gates, gently.

She stirred, and achieved a faint smile.

“It’s terribly hot.  The sun strikes through,” she replied.  “Can’t we let some air in?”

“The dust would smother you.”

“Are we nearly there?”

“Getting on farther every minute,” he replied, cheerfully.

Again the smothering alkali rose and the dust cloud crawled.

Four hours later the traveller called Jim collapsed face downward.  The oxen stopped.  Gates lifted the man by the shoulders.  So exhausted was he that he had not the strength nor energy to spit forth the alkali with which his fall had caked his open mouth.  Gates had recourse to the water keg.  After a little he hoisted his companion to the front seat.

At intervals thereafter the lone human figure spoke the single word that brought his team to an instantaneous dead stop.  His first care was then the woman, next the man clinging to the front seat, then the oxen.  Before starting he clambered to the top of the wagon and cast a long, calculating look across the desolation ahead.  Twice he even further reduced the meagre contents of the wagon, appraising each article long and doubtfully before discarding it.  About mid-afternoon he said abruptly: 

“Jim, you’ve got to walk.”

The man demurred weakly, with a touch of panic.

“Every ounce counts.  It’s going to be a close shave.  You can hang on to the tail of the wagon.”

Yet an hour later Jim, for the fourth time, fell face downward, but now did not rise.  Gates, going to him, laid his hand on his head, pushed back one of his eyelids, then knelt for a full half minute, staring straight ahead.  Once he made a tentative motion toward the nearly empty water keg, once he started to raise the man’s shoulders.  The movements were inhibited.  A brief agony cracked the mask of alkali on his countenance.  Then stolidly, wearily, he arose.  The wagon lurched forward.  After it had gone a hundred yards and was well under way in its painful forward crawl, Gates, his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes fixed and glazed, drew the revolver from its holster and went back.

At sundown he began to use the gad.  The oxen were trying to lie down.  If one of them succeeded, it would never again arise.  Gates knew this.  He plied the long, heavy whip in both hands.  Where the lash fell it bit out strips of hide.  It was characteristic of the man that though heretofore he had not in all this day inflicted a single blow on the suffering animals, though his nostrils widened and his terrible red eyes looked for pity toward the skies, yet now he swung mercilessly with all his strength.

Dusk fell, but the hot earth still radiated, the powder dust rose and choked.  The desert dragged at their feet; and in the twilight John Gates thought to hear mutterings and the soft sound of wings overhead as the dread spirits of the wastes stooped low.  He had not stopped for nearly two hours.  This was the last push; he must go straight through or fail.