The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-05-23
tin cup on his head,

shadow like a vast cereciOth fell upon
the dead land And il was evening.
Fallon pushed on into the twilight of
the waste. Suddenly he saw, far up
against a gray slope. green splotch
OF vegetation. It was like a shout in
silence.
He stopped and stared doubling his
eyes. Through the hush he heard the
thin tinkle of falling waters. There
was a steep declivity to be climbed. He
made for it with a cry OF joy.
He had scrambled half way up the
rubble-st-ewn slope when the report Of
a rife doomed down the gulch and set
the echoes leaping in the hills. He felt
the wind of the bail, and the smitten
surface Of the slope a foot above his
head spewed pebbles over him.
Fallon forgot the water. He relaxed
his grip on the rocks and, rolling over
and over to the base Of the slope, fed
/ eastward among the grotesque hills
/ grown CHASTITY with the deepening
gloom.
| It seemed more like q man-this
| noiseless, tireless. pitiless. invisible
I thing that hunted him through the viii
/ derness. He thought Of his pursuer
/ vaguely. as one might think of Fate
/ Fate with the bolt of death in its hand
! to deliver or withhold. One may thirst
and live. But to die-tO be like Jensen
I to be like Jenseni
! Into the east fed Fallon. unconscious
OF fatigue and thirst. To him MS fight
! seemed rather a dream Of speed than a
running.
At length. stumbling over heap #
stones. he fell headlong, sprawllng in
the pebbles. Sitting up unsteadily, he
was aware for the first time that the
night had fallen; and new terror
/
with Jensens. standing tall and quiet
Z oh. so quiet,-with tin cups on Their
/ heads. He closed his eyes. and still the
things were there-tall. patient things
/ that stood so quiet, so unendurably
quiet.
He flung himself upon his face and
| pressed his naked arms about his head
/ to shut them out He swooned into the
/ sleep Of fatigue. Huge tin cups, over
! flowing with cool waters and borne
upon the heads Of tall, funeral figures.
! passed before him in endless process
/ sion.
He awakened. choking and burning
with thirst
{ The spring,
1 He would so back to the spring. He
/ would dare all the rifles and all the
/ ghosts i'm the world 10 keep him from
/ it, Getting unsteadiiy TO his feet, he
| started. He went on stumbling through
I the black dehles. his wheeling breath
Z filing the darkness with sibilant
/ echoes. Where was the spring? Which
/ way had he come?
He cast his fevered eyes upward and
/ searched for a landmark outlined
against the sky. II was all strange.
After age-lonE hours Of wandering he
gave up. and hurled sobbing, childish
/ curses az the stars. Then he curled up
under a bowlder and swooned into p
/ dream-haunted world. peopled with tall
I cup bearing figures. uuendurably quiet.
4 dull roar grew up IN the dream
world and shattered II. The night
lifted like . smoke
FaTon sat up and stared about him,
A red blur chung about the eastern
1 SUBMITS and the air was chill. From a
niche in a cliff to westward a blue
I spiotch OF smoke fioated upward in the
quiet air. Fallou stared at IL. searching
about in his dazed brain for its mean
ing As he stared. blue squirt Of
smoke issued from the niche. followed
by a roar and the r-r-r-r-spat-pingo Of
a rife ball that whisked past him IN a
puff Of wind It was a voice Of CON-
mand 10 be obeyed.
He scrambled 70 his feet and limped
eastward into the June dswu-a dawn
without bird note-a June without a
sprig Of green.
He proceeded with a listiess. drag
ging step. Il seemed to him that he
had been fleeing an age. 1t was NJ
/ longer panic fear that drove him; some
irresistible power pushed him from be-
hind Into the eaSt-into the east; i
was a fixed idea.
Tn the burning afternoon. weak
ened with the choke of thirst and
the gnawing Of hunger. he lay
down under a cliff thar cast TO shade
He was discoura ged. II al
seemed hideouS nightmare n,