ough she could hold a straight course there was no
assurance in her mind that she was going toward the A T O. Each step
might be taking her farther from home. A lime kiln burned in her throat.
She was so worn out from lack of food and the tremendous strain under
which she had been carrying on that her knees buckled under her weight
as she stumbled through the sand. The bad ankle complained continuously.

In this vast solitude there was something weird and eerie that shook her
courage. Nor was the danger all fantastic imaginings. The Indians might
yet discover her. She might wander far from beaten trails of travel and
die of thirst as so many newcomers had done. Possibilities of disaster
trooped through her mind.

She was still a child, on the sunny side of seventeen. So it was natural
that when she sat down to rest her ankle she presently began to sob
again, and that in her exhaustion she cried herself to sleep.

When her eyes opened, the sun was peeping over the desert horizon. She
could tell directions now. The A T O ranch must be far to the northeast
of where she was. But scarcely a mile from her ran a line of straggling
brush. It must be watered by a stream. She hobbled forward painfully to
relieve the thirst that was already a torment to her.

She breasted the rise of a little hill and looked down a gentle slope
toward the thicket. For a moment her heart lost a beat. A trickle of
smoke was rising from a camp-fire and a man was bending over it. He was
in the clothes of a white man. Simultaneously there came to her the
sound of a shot.

From her parched throat there came a bleating little cry. She hurried
forward, and as she went she called again and still again. She was
pitifully anxious lest the campers ride away before they should discover
her.

A man with a gun in his hand moved toward her from the creek. She gave a
little sobbing cry and stumbled toward him.

[Footnote 8: Cush is made of old corn bread and biscuits in milk, beaten
to a batter and fried in bacon grease with salt.]

CHAPTER XXXVI

HOMER DINSMORE ESCORTS RAMONA

"I'm lost!" cried Ramona.

"Where from?" asked Dinsmore.

"From the A T O."

"You're Clint Wadley's daughter, then?"

She nodded. "We met Indians. I ... got away."

The girl knelt beside the brook, put her hands on two stones that jutted
up from the water, and drank till her thirst was assuaged.

"I'm hungry," she said simply, after she had risen.

He led her b