, got out the breakfast things and
threw brush on the fire, speaking nothing but the essential word, for
hope and fear racked them. When he was within hail Daddy John ran to
meet him, but she stayed where she was, her hands making useless darts
among the pans, moistening her lips that they might frame speech easily
when he came. With down-bent head she heard his voice hoarse from a
dust-dried throat: he had found the trail and near it a spring, the
cask he carried was full, it would last them for twelve hours. But the
way was heavy and the animals were too spent for a day's march in such
heat. They would not start till evening and would journey through the
night.

She heard his feet brushing toward her through the sage, and smelled
the dust and sweat upon him as he drew up beside her. She was forced
to raise her eyes and murmur a greeting. It was short and cold, and
Daddy John marveled at the ways of women, who welcomed a man from such
labors as if he had been to the creek and brought up a pail of water.
His face, gaunt and grooved with lines, made her heart swell with the
pity she had so freely given David, and the passion that had never been
his. There was no maternal softness in her now. The man beside her
was no helpless creature claiming her aid, but a conqueror upon whom
she leaned and in whom she gloried.

After he had eaten he drew a saddle back into the rock's shade, spread
a blanket and threw himself on it. Almost before he had composed his
body in comfort he was asleep, one arm thrown over his head, his sinewy
neck outstretched, his chest rising and falling in even breaths.

At noon Daddy John in broaching the cask discovered the deficit in the
water supply. She came upon the old man with the half-filled
coffee-pot in his hand staring down at its contents with a puzzled
face. She stood watching him, guilty as a thievish child, the color
mounting to her forehead. He looked up and in his eyes she read the
shock of his suspicions. Delicacy kept him silent, and as he rinsed
the water round in the pot his own face reddened in a blush for the
girl he had thought strong in honor and self-denial as he was.

"I took it," she said slowly.

He had to make allowances, not only to her, but to himself. He felt
that he must reassure her, keep her from feeling shame for the first
underhand act he had ever known her commit. So he spoke with all the
cheeriness he could command:

"I guess you needed it pre