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Updated: May 15, 2025
The sun set upon the third day of McTeague's flight, night came on, the stars burned slowly into the cool dark purple of the sky. The gigantic sink of white alkali glowed like snow. McTeague, now far into the desert, held steadily on, swinging forward with great strides. His enormous strength held him doggedly to his work. Sullenly, with his huge jaws gripping stolidly together, he pushed on.
On this principle they were warm supporters and friends of the Rev. Dr. McTeague. The minister had even gone so far as to present to the brothers a copy of his philosophical work "McTeague's Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis." and the two brothers had read it through in the office, devoting each of them a whole morning to it. Mr.
McTeague did not know how he killed his enemy, but all at once Marcus grew still beneath his blows. Then there was a sudden last return of energy. McTeague's right wrist was caught, something licked upon it, then the struggling body fell limp and motionless with a long breath. As McTeague rose to his feet, he felt a pull at his right wrist; something held it fast.
His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a fell of stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, strong as vises, the hands of the old-time car-boy. Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the carnivora. McTeague's mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish.
McTeague's eyes wandered over the illimitable stretch of alkali that stretched out forever and forever to the east, to the north, and to the south. "That," said Cribbens, "that's Death Valley." There was a long pause. The horses panted irregularly, the sweat dripping from their heaving bellies.
As sometimes happens, Marcus furnished the explanation upon the instant. "I promised a duck up here on the avenue I'd call for his dog at four this afternoon." Marcus was Old Grannis's assistant in a little dog hospital that the latter had opened in a sort of alley just off Polk Street, some four blocks above Old Grannis lived in one of the back rooms of McTeague's flat.
Every day his privacy was invaded. He would complain to the landlady, he would. He'd move out of the place." In the end he had given Maria seven empty whiskey flasks, an iron grate, and ten cents the latter because he said she wore her hair like a girl he used to know. After coming from Miss Baker's room Maria knocked at McTeague's door.
They clamored into each other's faces over Old Grannis's cracked pitcher, over Miss Baker's silk gaiters, over Marcus Schouler's whiskey flasks, reaching the climax of disagreement when it came to McTeague's instruments. "Ah, no, no!" shouted Maria. "Fifteen cents for the lot! I might as well make you a Christmas present! Besides, I got some gold fillings off him; look at um."
He was an Englishman and an expert dog surgeon, but Marcus Schouler was a bungler in the profession. His father had been a veterinary surgeon who had kept a livery stable near by, on California Street, and Marcus's knowledge of the diseases of domestic animals had been picked up in a haphazard way, much after the manner of McTeague's education.
For a moment Marcus hesitated. While he was catching the mule McTeague might get away. But where to, in heaven's name? A rat could not hide on the surface of that glistening alkali, and besides, all McTeague's store of provisions and his priceless supply of water were on the mule. Marcus ran after the mule, revolver in hand, shouting and cursing. But the mule would not be caught.
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