noon
before
But at length the storm passed over and over his spent members ; sand gathered by the handful in the folds of his clothes ; the end was as near as end could be . It was just then that two riders , who fancied they had heard a voice , struck an undoubted trail before it vanished , and followed it to the great sprawling body in which the dregs of life pulsed feebly . The thing groaned as it was lifted and strapped upon a horse ; it gurgled gibberish at the taste of raw spirits later in the same hour . It was high noon before Vanheimert opened a seeing eye and blinked it in the unveiled sun . He was lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees . The ground had been cleared by no human hand ; it was a little basin of barren clay , burnt to a brick , and drained by the tiny water-hole that sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a natural circle . Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference ; it was the sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep exhaustion .