‘Where’d she go?’

He jerked his thumb towards the southeast.

‘That way, somewhere.’

‘You mean out in the desert?’

He shook his head. ‘With the pup,’ he said. ‘A little dog. Cute as hell.’

‘When did she leave?’

‘Sunday night,’ he said.

‘Sunday!’ I said. ‘Jesus Christ, man! That was three days ago! Did she have anything to eat with her? Anything to drink.’

‘Milk,’ he said. ‘She had a bottle of milk for the dog.’

I went out beyond the clearing of his hut and looked towards the southwest. It was very cold and the moon was high, the stars in lush clusters across the blue dome of the sky. West and south and east spread a desolation of brush, sombre Joshua trees, and stumpy hills. I hurried back to the hut.

‘Come out and show me which way she went,’ I said.

He put down his magazine and pointed to the southeast. ‘That way,’ he said.

I tore the magazine out of his hand, grabbed him by the neck and pushed him outside into the night. He was thin and light, and he stumbled about before balancing himself. ‘Show me,’ I said. We went to the edge of the clearing and he grumbled that he was a sick man, and that I had no right to push him around. He stood there, straightening his shirt, tugging at his belt. ‘Show me where she was when you saw her last,’ I said. He pointed.

‘She was just going over that ridge.’

I left him standing there and walked out a quarter of a mile to the top of the ridge. It was so cold I pulled my coat around my throat. Under my feet the earth was churning of coarse dark sand and little stones, the basin of some prehistoric sea. Beyond the ridge were other ridges like it, hundreds of them stretching infinitely away. The sandy earth revealed no footstep, no sign that it had ever been trod. I walked on, struggling through the miserable soil that gave slightly and then covered itself with crumbs of grey sand.

After what seemed two miles, I sat on a round white stone and rested. I was perspiring, and yet it was bitterly cold. The moon was dipping towards the north. It must have been after three. I had been walking steadily but slowly in a rambling fashion, still the ridges and mounds continued, stretching away without end, with only cactus and sage and ugly plants I didn’t know marking it from the dark horizon.

I remembered road maps of the district. There were no roads, no towns, no human life between here and the other side of the desert, nothing but wasteland for almost a hundred miles. I got up and walked on. I was numb with cold, and yet the sweat poured from me. The greying east brightened, metamorphosed to pink, then red, and then the giant ball of fire rose out of the blackened hills. Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to. cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.