tood with ears cocked forward, and dirt-caked nostrils distended,
gazing into the south. Endicott sprang to his slicker, and producing
the flask, saturated his handkerchief with the thick red liquid. He
tried to sponge out the mouths and noses of the horses but they drew
back, trembling and snorting in terror.

"Why, it's blood!" cried the girl, her eyes dilated with horror. "From
the horse that died," explained Endicott, as he tossed the rag to the
ground.

"But, the water--surely there was water in the flask last night!"
Then, of a sudden, she understood. "You--you fed it to me in my
sleep," she faltered. "You were afraid I would refuse, and that was my
dream!"

"Mind over matter," reminded Endicott, with a distortion of his
bleeding lips that passed for a grin. Again he fumbled in his slicker
and withdrew the untouched can of tomatoes. He cut its cover as he had
seen Tex do and extended it to the girl. "Drink some of this, and if
the horses hold out we will reach the river in a couple of hours."

"I believe it's growing a little cooler since that awful wind went
down," she said, as she passed the can back to Endicott. "Let's push
on, the horses seem to know there is water ahead. Oh, I hope they can
make it!"

"We can go on a-foot if they can't," reassured the man. "It is not
far."

The horses pushed on with renewed life. They stumbled weakly, but the
hopeless, lack-lustre look was gone from their eyes and at frequent
intervals they stretched their quivering nostrils toward the long green
line in the distance. So slow was their laboured pace that at the end
of a half-hour Endicott dismounted and walked, hobbling clumsily over
the hot rocks and through ankle-deep drifts of dust in his high-heeled
boots. A buzzard rose from the coulee ahead with silent flapping of
wings, to be joined a moment later by two more of his evil ilk, and the
three wheeled in wide circles above the spot from which they had been
frightened. A bend in the coulee revealed a stagnant poison spring. A
dead horse lay beside it with his head buried to the ears in the slimy
water. Alice glanced at the broken chain of the hobbles that still
encircled the horse's feet.

"It's the pack-horse!" she cried. "They have only one horse between
them!"

"Yes, he got away in the night." Endicott nodded. "Bat is hunting
water, and Tex is waiting." He carried water in his hat and dashed it
over the heads of the horses, and sponged out