Indian might understand clearly. 'What I
have is my brother's. When Kish Taka wants a friend, let him come down
into Desert Valley and call to Alan Howard.'

The beady, bird-like eyes were void of expression as Kish Taka regarded
him steadily. The Indian did not so much as nod again. Like the
desert that had mothered him and his progenitors, he had the tricks of
silence and of inscrutability.

From the few words which the Indian had spoken and from his own
suddenly altered estimate of his new companion, Howard came to
understand fully the amazing act which Kish Taka had performed during
the night. The Indian had been near the limits of his strength and
endurance when the white man had given him generously of his water.
Kish Taka had drank sparingly and, because he was desert-bred and
because the stock from which he was sprung was desert-bred, his bodily
strength had returned to him. He slept; Howard slept. But the Indian
woke, somewhat refreshed, in half an hour. He understood that in the
canteen there was not water for both. He promptly drank one of the two
remaining cupfuls, slung the canteen over his shoulder and struck off
swiftly for the twenty-five-mile-distant spring.

Again, had he been other than a Hopi, less than the superb creature
that he was, the thing could not have been done. Down in Oraibi to-day
an Indian boy will run eighty miles in a day for ten dollars, and on
his return will run races for fun. The American desert has made him
just as it has made the thirstless cactus and the desert wolf. He is a
special creation, and Kish Taka was but doing the thing he knew. On
the run he drained the canteen; at the end of it he stopped and drank
and rested briefly. Then with full canteen he turned back to succour
and save the man who had befriended and saved him. So it came about
that he found Howard in time.

All of that long hot day they sought to rest, lying inert in what scant
shade they could find, eating a few bits of dried beef, drinking their
water now and then. By the time that the first hint of coming coolness
crept into the air Howard sat up, somewhat refreshed and again eager to
be moving. He turned to the Indian with a question on his lips, for a
thought had come to him.

'Do you know Jim Courtot?' he asked sharply.

Kish Taka's eyes were veiled.

'What man, Jeem Cour'?' he demanded expressionlessly. Then, with the
naivete of a child: 'Him your frien'?'

Howard tapped the s