Give out that I'm sick--I
am--and cancel the few speaking engagements left. Tell Jonas he is not
to worry. Yours, E. H."
He sealed this note, then he pulled on a soft hat and, as the train
stopped at a water tank, he slipped off the platform and stood in the
shadow of an old shed. It seemed to him a long time before the engine,
with violent puffing and jolting, started the long train on again. But
finally the tail lights disappeared in the distance and Enoch was alone
in the desert. For a few moments he stood beside the track, drawing in
deep breaths of the warm night air. Then he started slowly westward
along the railway tracks. He had noted a cluster of adobe houses a
mile or so back, and toward these he was headed. In spite of the agony
of the blow he had sustained Enoch, gazing from the silver flood of the
desert, to the silver arch of the heavens, was conscious of a thrill of
excitement and not unpleasant anticipation. Somewhere, somehow, in the
desert, he would find peace and sufficient spiritual strength to
sustain him when once more he faced Washington and the world.
BOOK III
THE ENCHANTED CANYON
CHAPTER VII
THE DESERT
"If I had a son, I would teach him obedience as heaven's first law, for
so only can a man be trained to obey his own better self.
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