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Updated: June 6, 2025
What's ten per cent, on twenty dollars?" Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves of the desert and tried to solve the problem. "What's one-tenth of twenty million?" Young Dick demanded irritably. "Huh! two million, of course." "Well, five per cent's half of ten per cent. What does twenty million earn at five per cent, for one year?" Tim hesitated. "Half of it, half of two million!"
Walls and weathered slants of rock and steep slopes of reddish-yellow sand inclosed this oval depression. The floor was white, and it seemed to move gently or radiate with heat-waves. Studying it, Slone made out that the motion was caused by wind in long bleached grass. He had crossed small areas of this grass in different parts of the region.
A few hours after sunrise, a white haze settled over the dull, dead plain, the heat-waves rolled up to the cavalcade like a burning prairie, sweat and dust crusted over the horses under saddle, without variation of pace or course. Only three herds were met, feeling their way through the mirages, or loitering along the waters.
More than once he paused, alarmed, at voices in the woods, only to find that the sounds issued from his own throat. It had grown very hot now, so hot that heat-waves obscured his vision and caused the most absurd forms to take shape. He began to hunt aimlessly for water, but there was none. Evidently this heat had parched the land, dried up the streams, and set the stones afire.
When, in the early morning or toward nightfall, the conical volcanoes cast their lengthening shadows upon this expanse of sand, it reminds one of the surface of the moon as seen through a telescope. But at midday, beneath the pitiless rays of the equatorial sun, it resembles an enormous pool of molten brass, the illusion being heightened by the heat-waves which flicker and dance above it.
On the man's back was a pack, with the huge swell of the blanket rising up beyond the neck and generating heat-waves; a loaf of tough black bread fastened upon the knapsack or tied inside a faded red handkerchief; and a dingy, scarred tin Billy-can. At his shapeless, rolling waist his belt hung heavy with a bayonet in its casing.
"Now if happy chance should bring Overland Red on this freight, with his burro and outfit; I'll have one reason to offer for wanting to go with him. I've probably saved him some annoyance, indirectly, but rather effectively, I think." The great oil-burning locomotive roared in, casting heat-waves that smelled of steam, iron, and mechanical energy. The hot air sickened Winthrop.
As spectators there assembled one youthful grocery clerk, stopping his Ford delivery wagon to stare from the seat, and one solemn small boy, tugging a smaller sister who had a careless nose. "I wonder where the Haydocks are? They ought to show up, at least," said Erik. Carol smiled confidently at him, and peered down the empty road toward town. Only heat-waves and dust and dusty weeds.
Luther Meeker, or whatever he calls himself, is so bad as he makes out to be eh, Mr. Trenholm?" We shook hands on the compact, lying there on the sizzling iron deck-plates that reflected the rays of the sun in shimmering heat-waves, making our exposed position intolerable after the thirst and smoke and hunger we had endured in the forecastle. "Then that's settled, Mr. Trenholm.
Still the boy carried a pressing invitation from a leading drover to come, and neither slacking rein nor looking back, he was soon swallowed up in the heat-waves over the plain. Sargent and Dell sought the shelter of the awning. "Well," said the latter, "that trip's a wild-goose chase. How he expects to buy cattle without money gets me." "It may be easier than it seems," answered Sargent.
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