It is true, thought Cecil Banks, weaving his way around a clump of smooth boulders, bleached white by the sun, I am going to die out here.
It is trueI am going to die out hereThe path, for what it was worth, was little more than a pencil line or, more accurately, a chalk line. Like the boulders and everything else, the intense heat had sucked all colour and all life from the land. He longed for rain but, turning to the sky, he knew it would never come.
Not until he was long dead.
From somewhere far away, a buzzard squealed. They"d feast on him soon enough, and the idea caused him to shudder. Not that he"d feel it, of course, but thinking of those hard beaks ripping out his eyes, his tongue, made his stomach heave.
Standing watching Hardin riding into the distance, as if it were all som
