The baked dry sand crackled into innumerable tiny flakes under his feet.

The twigs of the sage-brush snapped like brittle pipestems as he pushed through them.

It grew hotter.

At eleven the earth was like the surface of a furnace; the air, as McTeague breathed it in, was hot to his lips and the roof of his mouth.

The sun was a disk of molten brass swimming in the burnt-out blue of the sky.