desert laid hold upon him with the grip which first benumbs, then breeds
dull rage, and finally makes men mad. Mile after mile the glistening
rails sped backward into a shimmering haze of red dust. The glow of the
breathless forenoon was like the blinding brightness of a forge-fire. To
right and left the great treeless plain rose to bare buttes, backed by
still barer mountains. Let the train speed as it would, there was always
the same wearying prospect, devoid of interest, empty of human
landmarks. Only the blazing sun swung from side to side with the slow
veerings of the track: what answered for a horizon seemed never to
change, never to move.

At long intervals a siding, sometimes with its waiting train, but
oftener empty and deserted, slid into view and out again. Still less
frequently a telegraph station, with its red, iron-roofed office, its
water-tank cars and pumping machinery, and its high-fenced corral and
loading chute, moved up out of the distorting heat haze ahead, and was
lost in the dusty mirages to the rear. But apart from the crews of the
waiting trains, and now and then the desert-sobered face of some
telegraph operator staring from his window at the passing special, there
were no signs of life: no cattle upon the distant hills, no loungers on
the station platforms.

Lidgerwood had crossed this arid, lifeless plain twice within the week
on his preliminary tour of inspection, but both times he had been in the
Pullman, with fellow-passengers to fill the nearer field of vision and
to temper the awful loneliness of the waste. Now, however, the desert
with its heat, its stillness, its vacancy, its pitiless barrenness,
claimed him as its own. He wondered that he had been impatient with the
men it bred. The wonder now was that human virtue of any temper could
long withstand the blasting touch of so great and awful a desolation.