When he was athirst almost to the point of exhaustion he found a knob-like growth a scant two inches above the surface of the ground, recognized it for a promise of succour and with the last ounce of his strength dug the deep sand all about it. The end of his effort gave to him a strange and rare vegetable reservoir like an elongated radish, which miraculously holds scant moisture of summer rains the year round. “Root-of-the-sands” the Sonorans have named it. In the desolation between the Pinacate and the Gulf even the coyotes have the wisdom to dig for this precious sustainer of life. Ygnacio devoured the whole of the root and was revived. He found others, which he tied into a bundle to carry over his shoulders. Food and drink had come to him from the hand of Elder Brother himself when it was decreed by man he should have neither. Wherefore love o’ life once more burned strong in the man. He set his course northward, travelling only by night when the heat had given place to the biting desert chill, keeping his precious roots buried in the sand while he slept by day so that evaporation would not rob him of the promise of escape from inferno. Straight as an arrow northward where, beyond the Line, lay tribes of Papagoes who never had heard of Don Padraic O’Donoju nor of a murderer named Ygnacio. So it happened that on the third night of his march, when Ygnacio had paused to munch a segment of the sustaining root, came to his ears the sound of a voice, faintly and from a great distance. It might be a human voice, though there was a burred and thickened quality to it almost like a burro’s bray. The Indian boldly followed where his ears gave direction. “Gol’--gol’--gol’” was the monotonous iteration, sounding almost like the muffled tapping of a clapper against metal. He walked a mile--so clearly do sounds carry in the desert night--and suddenly came upon the figure of a white man. Naked above the waist, wisp of a goatee tilted at the stars, arms rigid at sides and with fingers widespread, the spectre of a white man chanted the single word, “Gold.” CHAPTER XX THE COMING OF EL DOCTOR The sandstorm that overwhelmed Stooder and his guide on the Road of the Dead Men brought the mighty voice of the desert to the Garden of Solitude in requiem for the soul of Don Padraic O’Donoju. Savage elegy of a life lived in communion with the spirit of the wild.