' of thirst! If only I'd put in a couple
of air-tights. Pears is better nor anything; they ain't so blamed sweet,
they're kind of cool, and they has juice you can drink. And tomaters--if
only I had tomaters! This here dude-food, this strawberry jam, is goin' to
make me thirstier than ever. No water to mix the flour with, nothing to
cook in but salt grease. Smith, you're up against it, you are."

He built a little sage-brush fire, over which he cooked his bacon, and
with it he ate a dry biscuit, but his thirst was so great that it
overshadowed his hunger. Chewing grains of coffee stimulated him somewhat,
but the bacon and glucose jam increased his thirst tenfold, if such a
thing were possible. His thoughts of Dora, and his dreams of the future,
which had helped him through the afternoon, were no longer potent. He
could now think only of his thirst--of his overpowering desire for water.
It filled his whole mental horizon. Water! Water! Water! Was there
anything in the world to be compared with it!

His face was deep-lined with distress as he sat by the camp-fire, trying
in vain to moisten his lips with his dry tongue. One picture after another
arose before him: streams of crystal water which he had forded; icy
mountain springs at which he had knelt and drank; deep wells from which he
had thrown whole bucketfuls away after he had quenched what he then called
thirst. Thirst! He never had known thirst. What he had called thirst was
laughable in comparison with this awful longing, this madness, this desire
beside which all else paled.

In any other than an alkali country, the lack of water for the same length
of time would have meant little more than discomfort, but the parching,
drying effect of the deadly white dust entailed untold suffering upon the
traveller caught unprepared as was Smith.

He rolled and smoked innumerable cigarettes, rising at intervals to pace
restlessly to and fro. His lips and tongue were so parched that both taste
and feeling seemed deadened. Had he not seen the smoke, it is doubtful if
he could have been sure he was smoking.

He wandered away from the fire after a time, walking aimlessly, having no
objective point. He desired only to be moving. Something like a half-mile
from his camp he came into a shallow cut which appeared to have been made
during bygone rainy seasons, but which now bore no evidence of having
carried water for many years. He followed it mechanically, stumbling
awkwardly in hi