days before. In that time we
had crossed the mountain chain, and had come again to the sea. The
Lord was good to us. He sent us the water, and the horse's skull, and
the smooth hard beach, without breaks or the necessity of climbing
hills. And we needed it, oh, I promise you, we needed it!

I doubt if any of us could have kept the direction except by such an
obvious and continuous landmark as the sea to our left. It hardly
seemed worth while to focus my mind, but I did it occasionally just by
way of testing myself. Schwartz still threw away his gold coins, and
once, in one of my rare intervals of looking about me, I saw Denton
picking them up. This surprised me mildly, but I was too tired to be
very curious. Only now, when I saw Schwartz's arm sweep out in what
had become a mechanical movement, I always took pains to look, and
always I saw Denton search for the coin. Sometimes he found it, and
sometimes he did not.

The figures of my companions and the yellow-brown tide sand under my
feet, and a consciousness of the blue and white sea to my left, are all
I remember, except when we had to pull ourselves together for the
purpose of cutting fishhook cactus. I kept going, and I knew I had a
good reason for doing so, but it seemed too much of an effort to recall
what that reason was.

Schwartz threw away a gold piece as another man would take a stimulant.
Gradually, without really thinking about it, I came to see this, and
then went on to sabe why Denton picked up the coins; and a great
admiration for Denton's cleverness seeped through me like water through
the sand. He was saving the coins to keep Schwartz going. When the
last coin went, Schwartz would give out. It all sounds queer now, but
it seemed all right then--and it WAS all right, too.

So we walked on the beach, losing entire track of time. And after a
long interval I came to myself to see Schwartz lying on the sand, and
Denton standing over him. Of course we'd all been falling down a lot,
but always before we'd got up again.

"He's give out," croaked Denton.

His voice sounded as if it was miles away, which surprised me, but,
when I answered, mine sounded miles away, too, which surprised me still
more.

Denton pulled out a handful of gold coins.

"This will buy him some more walk," said he gravely, "but not much."

I nodded. It seemed all right, this new, strange purchasing power of
gold--it WAS all right, by God, and as real as buying br