The sun was a disk
of molten brass swimming in the burnt-out blue of the sky. McTeague
stripped off his woollen shirt, and even unbuttoned his flannel
undershirt, tying a handkerchief loosely about his neck.
"Lord!" he exclaimed. "I never knew it COULD get as hot as this."
The heat grew steadily fiercer; all distant objects were visibly
shimmering and palpitating under it. At noon a mirage appeared on the
hills to the northwest. McTeague halted the mule, and drank from the
tepid water in the canteen, dampening the sack around the canary's cage.
As soon as he ceased his tramp and the noise of his crunching, grinding
footsteps died away, the silence, vast, illimitable, enfolded him like
an immeasurable tide. From all that gigantic landscape, that colossal
reach of baking sand, there arose not a single sound. Not a twig
rattled, not an insect hummed, not a bird or beast invaded that huge
solitude with call or cry. Everything as far as the eye could reach,
to north, to south, to east, and west, lay inert, absolutely quiet and
moveless under the remorseless scourge of the noon sun. The very shadows
shrank away, hiding under sage-bushes, retreating to the farthest nooks
and crevices in the canyons of the hills.
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