Stooder wrapped the precious remains of his giant radish in a strip of his shirt and started back over the line of blue shadow cups in the sand. As he laboured through the heavy going he reviewed all he could remember of yesterday’s terrors, and a great fear began to build in the back of his mind. Fear of the leagues upon leagues of blank space about him--land unchanged by time since the waters of a great sea were withdrawn into a shallow cup now called the Gulf. Fear of latent forces which lurked in the naked mountains all about, in the ghostly mirage which stretched vain beauties before his eyes. Over-mastering all was a corroding fear of his own body. The Doc’s trained intelligence was functioning with deadly precision. It separated his mind from the rest of his being, counting the mind as a rider and the body the beast it rode. The rider willed that the beast carry it to a certain destination; did that beast stumble and fall the rider could cry out never so furiously but it would be lost. And that burden-bearer of the mind was capable of just so much. Its tissues and sinews were kept functioning by water and food. So much water and so much food gave so many foot-pounds of energy; no more. Inexorable mathematics! When sweat began to trickle down into his eyes Stooder could not repress a shudder. Lost! Water lost from his body. The desert greasewood is wise enough to coat all its leaves and little stems with creosote to trick evaporation; the big _sahuaro_ shows only the edges of its accordion flutings to the sun and greases them with paraffin; man yields water like a stranded jellyfish. Better take another chew on that water-root dingus to make up for sweat lost. Better give the old pulse a feel to see how it’s runnin’. The sun swam dizzily at meridian so that the footprints the Doc followed were hard to see--mere shallow spoon marks. On and on towards the south! What was that thing moving over yonder in that bunch of saltbush? Yes, sir, moving!--A coyote, by th’ eternal!--Naw, coyotes weren’t white like this animal; coyotes were a mangy yellow.--But, by criminy! this thing had the looks of a coyote--sharp nose and baggy tail half way ’tween its hind legs, skulkin’ like.--An albino coyote! Lookit! Eyes pinky like a white rabbit.--Whoever heard of an albino coyote? No phantom of the imagination that slinking, dirty-white creature which matched its pace to the Doc’s on parallel course through the low lying scrub. The desert Ishmael trotted along with a foolish air of being strictly about its own business, as if no other creature were in sight. When Stooder stopped to bawl curses at it the albino thing halted and made a great pretence of snouting at a flea bite, utterly oblivious to his presence. A fragment of dead bush-stock was hurled at it; the coyote lifted a corner of his lip in a deprecatory smile but did not abate his casual trot.