This one saw further. He knew that a
delicately adjusted machine often receives its worst damage from the
friction needed to stop the whirring wheels. Better to wait and let
them run down, untouched.
The forty miles from Kroonstad to Lindley were reducing themselves
from a geographical fact to a matter of physical and mental anguish.
There had been no rain for days, and under the burning sun, the
dusty veldt seemed dancing up and down before Weldon's tired,
feverish eyes. Now he passed through a stretch of bare and burned-
out sand; now he tramped over patches of tall dry grass; now he
plodded wearily around a heap of smooth black stones. Brick-red ant-
hills higher than his knees dotted themselves over the veldt, their
shell-like surface shielding a crowded insect colony within. Ant-
bear holes lurked unseen in his pathway, tripping his heedless
steps; and an occasional partridge went whirring upward, making him
start aside in causeless terror at the unwonted sound. And over it
all rested the glaring, shimmering, blinding light, laden with
myriad particles of dazzling red-brown dust. Later still, the red-
brown color vanished, and he walked for weary leagues over the fire-
blackened veldt where the black rocks offered no contrast to the
eye, and where the air was heavy with ashes caught up and scattered
by the light breeze which heralded the coming night.
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