True,
Greenfield had not lied: the address was genuine, but the man was gone.
For days Frawley had the city scoured without gaining a clue. No steamer
had left the harbor, not even a tramp. If Greenfield was not in hiding,
he must have buried himself in the interior.
It was a week before Frawley found the track. Greenfield had walked
thirty miles into the country and taken the train for Rio Mendoza on the
route across the Andes to Valparaiso.
Frawley followed the same day, somewhat mystified at this sudden change
of base. In the train the thermometer stood at 116 deg.. The heat made of
everything a solitude. Frawley, lifeless, stifling, and numbed, glued
himself to the air-holes with eyes fastened on the horizon, while the
train sped across the naked, singeing back of the plains like the welt
that springs to meet the fall of the lash. For two nights he watched the
distended sun, exhausted by its own madness, drop back into the heated
void, and the tortured stars rise over the stricken desert. At the end
of thirty-six hours of agony he arrived at Rio Mendoza.
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