He pulled down his hat until the wide brim touched his shoulders. He crouched lower under the cover of his cart and peered ahead. The road seemed to writhe under the lash of the noon-day heat; it swung from side to side, humped and bent itself like a fleeing serpent, and disappeared behind the spur of a low hill on which grew a scrawny thicket of bamboo.
There was not a house in sight. Along the left side of the road ran the deep, dry gorge of a stream, the banks sparsely covered by sunburned cogon grass. In places, the rocky, waterless bed showed aridly. Father, beyond the shimmer of quivering heat waves rose ancient hills not less blue than the cloud-palisaded sky. On the right stretched a sandy waste of low rolling dunes. Scattered clamps of hardy ledda relieved the otherwise barren monotony of the landscape. Far away he could discern a thin indigo line that was the sea.
The grating of the cartwheels on the pebbles of the road and the almost soundless shuffle of the weary bull but emphasized the stillness. Now and then came the dry rustling of falling earth as lumps from the cracked sides of the gorge rolled down to the bottom.
He struck at the bull with the slack of the rope. The animal broke into a heavy trot. The dust stirred slumberously. The bull slowed down, threw up his head, and a glistening thread of saliva spun out into the dry air. The driving rays of the sun were reflected in the point of light on the wet heaving flanks.