He did not care to hide that he held her cheaply, as a useless futile
thing. Once she had heard him say to Daddy John, "It's the women in the
train that make the trouble. They're always in the way." And she was
the only woman. She would like to see him conquered, beaten, some of his
heady confidence stricken out of him, and when he was humbled have stood
by and smiled at his humiliation.
So she passed over the empty land under the empty sky, a particle of
matter carrying its problem with it.
It was late afternoon when they encamped by the Big Sandy. The march had
been distressful, bitter in their mouths with the clinging clouds of
powdered alkali, their heads bowed under the glaring ball of the sun.
All day the circling rim of sky line had weaved up and down, undulating
in the uncertainty of the mirage, the sage had blotted into indistinct
seas that swam before their strained vision. When the river cleft showed
in black tracings across the distance, they stiffened and took heart,
coolness and water were ahead. It was all they had hope or desire for
just then. At the edge of the clay bluff, they dipped and poured down a
corrugated gully, the dust sizzling beneath the braked wheels, the
animals, the smell of water in their nostrils, past control.
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