Haze and black spots floated across the horizon, and round wafers, like duplicates of the sun, glittered back from the dull surface of the plains.

Then he resolved to look no more until he had counted fifty, a hundred, but always with the same result, the return of the empty, unending plains--the disk growing redder as it neared the horizon, the fire it seemed to kindle as it sank, but nothing more.
Staggering under his burden, he tried to distract himself by fancying how the discovery of their absence would be made.

He heard the listless, half-querulous discussion about the locality that regularly pervaded the nightly camp.

He heard the discontented voice of Jake Silsbee as he halted beside the wagon, and said, "Come out o' that now, you two, and mighty quick about it." He heard the command harshly repeated.

He saw the look of irritation on Silsbee's dusty, bearded face, that followed his hurried glance into the empty wagon.