led forth a
look of compassion from the girl, a movement of exasperation from the
mountain man. Daddy John merely spat and lifted his hat to the faint
dawn air. It was finally agreed that David should be placed in the
wagon, his belongings packed on his horse, while the sick animal must
follow as best it could.

During the morning's march no one spoke. They might have been a
picture moving across a picture for all the animation they showed. The
exaltation of the evening before had died down to a spark, alight and
warming still, but pitifully shrunk from last night's high-flaming
buoyancy. It was hard to keep up hopes in these distressful hours.
California had again receded. The desert and the mountains were yet to
pass. The immediate moment hemmed them in so closely that it was an
effort to look through it and feel the thrill of joys that lay so far
beyond. It was better to focus their attention on the lone
promontories that cut the distance and gradually grew from flat
surfaces applied on the plain to solid shapes, thick-based and shadow
cloven.

They made their noon camp at a spring, bubbling from a rim of
white-rooted grass. David refused to take anything but water, groaning
as he sat up in the wagon and stretching a hot hand for the cup that
Susan brought. The men paid no attention to him. They showed more
concern for the sick horse, which when not incapacitated did its part
with good will, giving the full measure of its strength. That they
refrained from open anger and upbraiding was the only concession they
made to the conventions they had learned in easier times. Whether
David cared or not he said nothing, lying fever-flushed, his wandering
glance held to attention when Susan's face appeared at the canvas
opening. He hung upon her presence, querulously exacting in his
unfamiliar pain.

Making ready for the start their eyes swept a prospect that showed no
spot of green, and they filled their casks neck high and rolled out
into the dazzling shimmer of the afternoon. The desert was widening,
the hills receding, shrinking away to a crenelated edge that fretted a
horizon drawn as straight as a ruled line. The plain unrolled more
spacious and grimmer, not a growth in sight save sage, not a trickle of
water or leaf murmur, even the mirage had vanished leaving the distance
bare and mottled with a leprous white. At intervals, outstretched like
a pointing finger, the toothed summit of a ridge projected