It was after sunset when the little car hiccoughed up under the avenue of palms. An hour later in the first dark of night a file of horsemen quit the perfumed precincts of alfalfa fields behind the Casa O’Donoju. At the head, driving a pack-mule, was El Doctor Coyote Belly, big Quelele riding beside him. Behind were Benicia and Grant. Bim Bagley was file closer. In scabbards at the saddle of each hung carbines. El Doctor, the guide, set the course away from the Road of the Dead Men which, passing through the Garden of Solitude, buries itself in the Yuma Desert. His direction was south and west toward the Gulf and the labyrinth of volcano craters on its hither shore called Pinacate. CHAPTER XXII ALTAR TAKES ITS TOLL Dawn marched over the mountains like a phalanx of Alexander: spear points of light on long hafts, which drove at the zenith in solid bundles. Then the mercenaries of the sun trooped across the vacant desert floor wave on wave and strength following strength. All the dead world of Altar stirred and set itself for the ordeal of a new day. The figure of a man that had been Doc Stooder, cynical tinker of life’s rusts and corrodings, stirred under the trampling of the light--stirred and stretched its members in dull protest of unconsciousness. Finally when the arrows of the new day drove at his eyelids the man opened them and lay staring up into the sky’s opalescence. For a long minute they probed the marbled colour depths uncomprehendingly, then turned to find the rim of the iron mountains to the east. Comprehension came at last; with it a distorted memory image of hours of madness and wandering, agony of thirst, despair pressing upon footsteps that carried nowhere. Sleep which had put a period to all this nightmare had also mercifully rallied the man’s nervous forces to a new effort of self-saving. Men die hard because the instinct locked up in their sub-conscious minds always prevails over surrender of the conscious will. The Doc lifted an arm to shield his eyes and felt something sinuous slide off his body. An instant his heart was chilled, for the feeling was of a desert serpent trailing over his form. He dared lift his head ever so little and let his eyes rove down his body. A queer something, not snake, lay in a curve by his side; a pallid, root-like thing the size of a man’s wrist at one end and tapering to a stringy point. He raised himself on his elbow and drew the vegetable serpent to him. Just as he did so his eyes discovered the prints of a man’s feet in the sand by where he lay. “Glory be!” came the croak from stiffened lips, and the Doc concentrated all his scattered wits on an examination of the prodigy. Yes, footprints. They came from behind him; they were printed in a semi-circle about him to mark where one had stood hesitantly looking down at him while he slept; they marched off in line with their approach straight toward the tawny mountains ringing the northern horizon.