ttle hand--such a mite of a
hand--and clutched his daddy's beard. He was all I had, how could I wish
him dead? But now--now--my God!--if I were certain he was dead and it
hadn't hurt much."

Helm sprang to his feet, and swore an oath.

"We're not going to die," he cried, "not as easily as all that. Come on,
we have wasted enough precious time.

"Not till it's a little cooler. It's no good, I tell you, wearing
ourselves out in the heat."

And Helm, seeing the advice was good, lay down again. Lay down and tried
not to listen to the cawing of the crows, the only sound that broke
the stillness--tried not to think of cool waters; not to think of a
household down south; not to think of the girl who, notwithstanding his
mate's cynical warning, filled all his thoughts. He dozed a little and
dreamed, and wakened with a start and a strong feeling upon him that it
had been something more than a dream, that some one had really called
him, was calling him still. Was it his mother's voice, or that girl's,
or was it Anderson's? Anderson was sleeping heavily, and strong man as
he was, sobbing in his sleep. Helm stretched out a hand to awaken him
and then paused. Why should he? What had he better to offer than these
broken dreams?

He broke a branch from a tree, thereby scattering the crows and stepped
down to the edge of the glittering white salt. It crunched beneath his
feet like sand, and he went on till the hard crust began to give way
beneath him and the thick mud oozed up. Then when he thought it was
moist enough to resist the fierce hot wind, which was blowing from the
north like a breath from an oven, he prepared to write his last message.
And then came the difficulty.

What was he to say? What could he say? Not that he had so little, but so
much. And it might never be read after all, or at best it would only
be read by some station hand who, once they were dead, would give but
a passing thought to their message, only a passing thought to their
sufferings. They had found a skeleton, he remembered, the first year he
had been on Yerlo, a skeleton that must have been lying there years, a
poor wind-tossed, sunbaked thing from which all semblance of humanity
had long since departed, and he, in his carelessness, had thought so
little of it, had never realized the awful suffering that must have been
before the strong man came to _that_.

And now--and now--he took his stick and wrote in large printed letters
on the crisp salt--