ward him and limping when he moved.

But William was bare as the back of Casey's hand. There was no pack, no
coal-oil cans of water; only the halter and lead rope, that dangled and
caught on brush and impeded William's limping progress. I suppose even
miserable mules like company, for William permitted Casey to walk up and
take him by the halter rope. William had a badly skinned knee which gave
him the limp, and his right ear was broken close to his head so that the
structure which had been his pride dropped over his eye like a wet
sunbonnet.

Casey swore a little and started back along William's tracks to find the
water cans. He followed a winding, purposeless trail that never showed the
track of burros, and after an hour or so he came upon the pack and the
cans. Evidently the water supply had suffered in the wind, for only four
cans were with the blankets and pack saddle.

William had felt his pack slipping, Casey surmised, and had proceeded to
divest himself of the incumbrance in the manner best known to mules.
Having kicked himself out of it, he had undoubtedly discovered a leaking
can--supposing the cans had escaped thus far--and had battered them with
his heels until they were all leaking copiously. William had saved what he
could.

Casey read the whole story in the sand. The four cans were bent with
gaping seams, and their sides were scored with the prints of William's
hoofs. In a corner of one of them Casey found a scant half-cup of water,
which he drank greedily. It could no more than ease for a moment his
parched throat; it could not satisfy his thirst.

After that he led William back along the trail until the mounting sun
warned him that he was making no headway on his journey to the Tippipahs,
and that with no tracks in sight he had small hope of tracing the burros.

It was sundown again before he gave up hope, and Casey's thirst was a
demon within him. He had wasted a day, he told himself grimly. Now it was
going to be a fight.

Through the day he had mechanically studied the geologic formation of
those hills before him, and he had decided that the chance for water there
was too slight to make a search worth while. He would push on toward the
Tippipahs. _Pah_, he knew, meant water in the Indian tongue. He did not
know what _Tippi_ signified, but since Indians lived in the Tippipah range
he was assured that the water was drinkable. So he got stiffly to his
feet, studied again the darkling skyline, sen