s high-heeled cowboy boots over the rocks which had washed
into its bed from the alkali-coated sides. Suddenly he cried aloud, with a
shrill, penetrating cry that was peculiar to him when surprised or
startled. He had inadvertently kicked up a rock which showed moisture
beneath it!

He began to run, with his mouth open, his bloodshot eyes wide and staring.
There was a bare chance that it might come from one of those desert
springs which appear and disappear at irregular intervals in the sand. As
he ran, he saw hoof-tracks in what had once been mud, and his heart beat
higher with hope. He had a thought in his half-crazed brain that the water
might disappear before he could reach it, and he ran like one frenzied
with fear. The world was swimming around him, his heart was pounding in
his breast, yet still he stumbled on at top speed.

[Illustration: IT MEANT DEATH--BUT IT WAS WET!--IT WAS WATER!]

The cut grew deeper, and indications of moisture increased. He saw a
growth of large sage-brush, then a clump or two of rank, saw-edged grass.
These things meant water! He turned a bend and there, beneath a high bank,
was a pool crusted to the edge with alkali!

Smith knew that it was strongly alkali; that it meant certain
illness--enough of it, death. But it was wet!--it was water!--and he must
drink. He fell, rather than knelt, in it. When taste came back he realized
that it was flat and lukewarm, but he continued to gulp it down. At any
other time it would have nauseated him, but now he drank to his capacity.
When he could drink no more, he sat up--realizing what he had done. He had
swallowed liquid poison--nothing less. The result was inevitable. He was
going to be ill--excruciatingly, terribly ill, alone in the Bad Lands!
This was as certain as was the fact that night had come.

"I was so dry," he whimpered, "I couldn't help it! I was so dry!" He
scrambled to his feet.

"I gotta get back to camp. This water's goin' to raise thunder when it
begins to get in its work. I gotta get back to my blankets and lay down."

Before he reached the heap of ashes which he called camp, the first
symptoms of his coming agony began to show themselves. He felt slightly
nauseated; then a quick, griping pain which was a forerunner of others
which were to make him sweat blood.

Many of these springs and stagnant pools carry arsenic in large
quantities, and of such was the water of which Smith had drunk. In his
exhaustion, the poison and a