e as unascertainable as their
source was hidden.

Although the sun was half-way down the west, its glare remained
untempered, and the tantalizing shade of the sparse mesquite was more
of a trial than a comfort to the lone woman who, refusing its deceitful
invitation, plodded steadily over the waste. Stop, indeed, she dared
not. In spite of her fatigue, regardless of the torture from feet and
limbs unused to walking, she must, as she constantly assured herself,
keep going until strength failed. So far, fortunately, she had kept her
head, and she retained sufficient reason to deny the fanciful
apprehensions which clamored for audience. If she once allowed herself
to become panicky, she knew, she would fare worse--far worse--and now,
if ever, she needed all her faculties. Somewhere to the northward,
perhaps a mile, perhaps a league distant, lay the water-hole.

But the country was of a deadly and a deceitful sameness, devoid of
landmarks and lacking well-defined water-courses. The unending mesquite
with its first spring foliage resembled a limitless peach-orchard sown
by some careless and unbelievably prodigal hand. Out of these false
acres occasional knolls and low stony hills lifted themselves so that
one came, now and then, to vantage-points where the eye leaped for
great distances across imperceptible valleys to horizons so far away
that the scattered tree-clumps were blended into an unbroken carpet of
green. To the woman these outlooks were unutterably depressing, merely
serving to reveal the vastness of the desolation about her.

At the crest of such a rise she paused and studied the country
carefully, but without avail. She felt dizzily for the desert bag swung
from her shoulder, only to find it flat and dry; the galvanized
mouthpiece burned her fingers. With a little shock she remembered that
she had done this very thing several times before, and her repeated
forgetting frightened her, since it seemed to show that her mind had
been slightly unbalanced by the heat. That perhaps explained why the
distant horizon swam and wavered so.

In all probability a man situated as she was would have spoken aloud,
in an endeavor to steady himself; but this woman did nothing of the
sort. Seating herself in the densest shade she could find--it was
really no shade at all--she closed her eyes and relaxed--no easy thing
to do in such a stifling temperature and when her throat was aching
with drought.

At length she opened her e