ccompanying impurities took hold of him with a
fierceness which it might not have done had he been in perfect physical
condition; but his stomach, already disordered from irregular and improper
food, absorbed the poison with avidity, and the result was an agony
indescribable.

As he writhed on his saddle-blankets under the stars, he groaned and
cursed that unknown God above him. His face and hands were covered with a
cold sweat; his forehead and finger-tips were icy. The night air was
chill, but he was burning with an inward fever, and his thirst now was
akin to madness. With all his strength of will, he fought against his
desire to return to the pool.

Smith did not expect to die. He felt that if he could keep his senses and
not crawl back to drink again, he would pull through somehow. The living
hell he now endured would pass.

He wallowed and threshed about like a suffering animal, beating the earth
with his clenched fists, during the paroxysms of cutting, wrenching pain.
His suffering was supreme. All else in the world shrank into
insignificance beside it. No thoughts of Dora fortified him; no mother's
face came to comfort him; nor that of any human being he had ever known.
He was just Smith--self-centred--alone; just Smith, fighting and suffering
and struggling for his life. His anguish found expression in the single
sentence:

"I'm sick! I'm sick! Oh, God! I'm sick!" He repeated it in every key with
every inflection, and his moans lost themselves in the silence of the
desert.

Yet underneath it all, when his agony was at its height, he still believed
in himself. In a kind of subconscious arrogance, he believed that he was
stronger than Fate, more powerful than Death. He would not die; he would
live because he wanted to live. Death was not for him--Smith. For others,
but not for him.

At last the paroxysms became less frequent and lost their violence. When
they ceased altogether, he lay limp and half-conscious. He was content to
remain motionless until the flies and insects of the sand roused him to
the fact that another day had come.

He was incredibly weak, and it took all his remaining strength to throw
his forty-pound cow-saddle upon his horse's back. His knees shook under
him, and he had to rest before he could lift his foot to the stirrup and
pull himself into the seat.

Before he rode away he turned and looked at the hollow in the sand where
his blankets had been.

"That was a close squeak, Smith