whisky of Mexico,
too, that ate into a man like a corrosive acid. But he went on steadily,
putting behind him as rapidly as possible the border, and the girls who
had laughed at him. He traveled by a pointed mountain which cut off the
stars at the horizon, and as the miles behind him increased, in spite of
his growing fatigue his spirits rose. Before him lay the fulness of life
again. Mexico City was a stake worth gambling for. He was gambling, he
knew. He had put up his life, and his opponent was thirst. He knew that,
well enough, too, and the figure rather amused him.

"Playing against that, all right," he muttered. He paused and turned
around. The sun had lifted over the rim of the desert, a red disc which
turned the gleaming white alkali patches to rose. "By God," he said,
"that's the ante, is it--A red chip!"

A caravan of mules was coming up from the head of the Gulf of
California. It moved in a cloud of alkali dust and sand, its ore-sacks
coated white. The animals straggled along, wandering out of the line
incessantly and thrust back into place by muleteers who cracked long
whips and addressed them vilely.

At a place where a small rock placed on another marked a side trail to
water, the caravan turned and moved toward the mountains. Close as they
appeared, the outfit was three hours getting to the foot hills. There
was a low meadow now, covered with pale green grass. Quail scurried away
under the mesquite bushes, stealthily whistling, and here and there the
two stones still marked the way.

With the instinct of desert creatures the mules hurried their pace.
Pack-saddles creaked, spurs jingled. Life, insistent, thirsty life,
quickened the dead plain.

A man rode ahead. He dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows
flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been
fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking.
The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not
enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare
mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely what
he was looking for, and at last he saw it, a circle of flat stones, some
twenty feet across, the desert sign for a buried spring.

But there was something inside the circle, something which lay still.
The man put his horse to the gallop again. There was a canteen lying in
the trail, a canteen covered with a dirty plaid casing. The horse's hoo