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Show 80 BY PATH AND TRAIL. water, out into the waste of sand, and, tearing and rip ping every shred of clothing from their emaciated bodies, shout at and damn the imaginary fiends mocking them. He asked me why it was that the skulls of men, who per ish of heat and thirst on the desert, split wide open as soon as life has left their trembling limbs? I answered I had never heard of the weird and singular phenomenon. " Yes," he continued, " I have seen dead men in the Hormiga desert, and the skull of every one of them was gaping. So dry is the air of these regions, so hungry is it for the heart's blood of its victim, that no sooner do men die than the hot air envelopes them, and, like a devil- fish, sucks from their tissues, veins and arteries all blood and water. I have followed the trail of dead men by the shreds and rags, the knife, revolver and canteen flung away and torn from them in their delirium; and when I came upon their bodies, the hair was ashen gray, the skulls split open and the bodies stark naked. Of tha skull, the remorseless heat makes a veritable steam chest, and when the sutured bone walls can no longer stand the awful strain, the skull splits open and the brain pro trudes. I was traveling one afternoon with a companion over the Muerto desert when the braying of one of my burros called us to a halt. A walking burro never brays while the sun shines unless it sees or scents danger. Lifting my field glass I saw, far away to our left, a man evidently in distress. We altered our course, and, as we drew to hailing distance, the man, completely naked, ran to meet us, wildly gesticulating, ' Ritrarse, ritrarse' go back, go back he shouted, i the demons are too many for us, let us run, let us run.' We gave the poor fellow a few sips of water, and after a while fed him chocolate and crackers, and brought him with us. Striking out diagon- |
