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Page 73
Creeping down the canon wall, they cross the bottom, pass the
spring, and disappear at a turn in the canon walls. Nature and
Indian meet and merge in a world of torture and despair.
Dick had fared badly in the Lava Beds. One spring after the
other he found dry. His horse fell from exhaustion and thirst;
he ended the sufferings of his pack-mule with a revolver-bullet.
Dick staggered on afoot across the desert, hoping to find water
at Apache Spring. His blue shirt was torn and faded to a dingy
purple. Hat and shoulders were gray with alkali dust. Contact
with the rocks and cactus had rent trousers and leggings. His
shoes, cut by sharply pointed stones, and with thread rotted by
the dust of the deserts, were worn to shreds. Unshaven and
unshorn, with sunken cheeks and eyes bright with the delirium of
thirst, he dragged his weary way across the desert. He reached
Apache Spring shortly after the passage of the Indians, but
craving for water was so great that he did not observe their
trail.
Reeling toward the spring, he cast aside his hat and flung down
his rifle in his eagerness to drink. Throwing himself on his
face before the hollow in the rock from which the water trickled,
he first saw that the waters had dried up. With his bony fingers
he dug into the dry sand, crying aloud in despair. Stiffly he
arose and blundered blindly to a rock, upon which he sank in his
weakness.
"Another day like this and I'll give up the fight," he moaned.
"Apache Spring dry--the first time in years; Little Squaw Spring,
nothing but dust and alkali; it is twenty miles to Clearwater
Spring--twenty-miles--if I can make it."
Dick trembled with weakness. His swollen tongue clove to the
roof of his mouth. His lips were cracked and blackened. Bits of
foam flickered about the corners of his mouth. The glare blinded
his eyes, which were half-closed. At times fever-waves swept
over him; again he shuddered with cold.
Sounds of falling waters filled his ears. The sighing of the
wind through the canon walls suggested the trickling of
fountains. Rivers flowed before his eyes through green meadows,
only to fade into the desert as he gazed.
"What a land! what a land! It is the abode of the god of thirst!
He tempts men into his valley with the lure of gold, and saps the
life-blood from their bodies--drop by drop. Drop by drop I hear
it falling. No, it is water I hear! There it is! How cool it
looks!"
Dick rose and staggered toward the cliff. In his delirium of
thirst he saw streams of water gush down the mountainside.
Holding out his arms, he cried: "Saved, saved!"
His hands fell limply by his sides as the illusion faded. He
then doubled them into fists, and shook them at the cliff in a
last defiance of despair. "You sha'n't drive me mad!"
He seized his empty canteen, pressing it to his lips.
"No, I drained that two days ago--or was it three?" he whispered
in panic, as he threw it aside.
Picking up his gun, he falteringly attempted the ascent. "I
won't give up--I won't," he shouted huskily. "I've fought the
desert before and conquered. I'll conquer again--I'll--"
His will-power ebbed with his failing strength. Blindness fell
upon him. Oblivion swept over him. He sank, dying of thirst, in
the sands of the desert.
As the buzzard finds the dead, so an Apache crept upon Dick as he
lay prostrate. But as the Indian aimed, he heard footsteps from
a draw. He saw a man approaching the spring. Silently he fled
behind the rocks.
It was Jack. He had entered the Lava Beds from the east, closely
following the man for whom he had searched for so many weary
months. Others of the Apaches had marked him already. Knowing
he would go to the spring, they waited warily to learn if he were
alone. The band had scattered to surround him at the water-hole.
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