The desert was a place of great beauty, especially on this, a night with a full moon. It was, however, a terrible beauty, because of its remote location, the bitter cold and the wind that never seemed to end, and the acute lack of water. It was, in fact, an extremely dangerous place. But the desert was not an evil place. It was rather, like the high mountains and deep ocean, just indifferent to the passage of men. It was a timeless thing that could...