p
his eyes fastened, some place toward which he must go, and that he
must keep on going and going, until he should reach it. Determination
rose spontaneously, and he got up and stumbled on, frequently falling,
but always soon rising again and keeping on with his journey. After a
long time he saw something that glittered in the moonlight. His first
thought was "water!" and with a cry that died in his parched, swollen
throat he sprang forward and seized it. But it was only a bottle, a
flat, empty whisky flask. He turned it over and over in his hands with
a haunting notion that in some way it was connected with his past.

Slowly the recollection shaped itself in his heat-bewildered faculties
that he and the two men who were luring him away had drunk from this
flask here and that then he had thrown it beside the road. Presently
the idea grew out of this recollection that he was on the right road
and that soon he would come to the house where there was water. The
thought made him spring forward again, and he rushed on aimlessly,
thinking of nothing but that somewhere ahead of him there was water.
He ran on and on, now this way and now that, falling and lying
unconscious, then, revived by the cool night air of the mountains,
rising and staggering on again. The sun rose and looked hotly down
upon him as he dragged himself along, hatless, haggard, his skin
burned to a blister, his eyes red and his swollen, blackened tongue
hanging from his mouth.

After a time he caught sight of a clump of green trees with something
shining behind them, which he thought was the water he was looking
for--water, for which every boiling drop of blood in his body was
fiercely calling; water, which his blistering throat and tongue must
have; water, for which the very marrow of his bones cried
out--water--water--and he ran with all the speed his frenzied longing
could force into his legs. Presently he could hear the rustle of green
leaves, and he thought it was the purring of wavelets on the bank, the
white, shining bank that beckoned him on. He put out his hands to
plunge into the cool, bright waves. They struck a blank, white hall,
and he fell unconscious beside the doorway of Emerson Mead's ranch
house.

CHAPTER XV

Three horsemen galloped around the curve in the road that half circled
the house and the corral and the stables at Emerson Mead's ranch. One
of them swung his hat and shouted a loud "Whoo-oo-oo-ee!" But there
was no respo