breeze in the maple-trees.
Well, I thought about that all the time; it grew to be an obsession,
a mirage. I could smell the moss-like smell of bock beer; I even
remembered conversations we had had. You fellows were as real to me
as you are real to-night. It's strange, and then, when you come to,
uncanny; you feel the sweat on you turn cold.

"We had ridden on in that way I don't know how long, snatching a
couple of feverish hours of sleep in the night, Whitney groaning and
mumbling horribly, when suddenly my horse gave a little snicker--low,
the way they do when you give them grain--and I felt his tired body
straighten up ever so little. 'Maybe,' I thought, and I looked up.
But I didn't much care; I just wanted to crawl into some cool place and
forget all about it and die. It was late in the afternoon. My shadow was
lengthening. Too late, really, for much mirage; but I no longer put
great stock in green vegetation and matters of that kind; I had seen
too much of it in the last two days fade away into nothing--nothing
but blistering, damned sand. And so I wouldn't believe the cool reeds
and the sparkling water until I had dipped down through a little swale
and was actually fighting my horse back from the brink. I knew enough
to do that, mind you, and to fight back the two mules so that they drank
just a little at a time--a little at a time; and all the while I had to
wait, with my tongue like sand in my mouth. Over the edge of my horse's
neck I could see the water just below; it looked as cool as rain. I was
always a little proud of that--that holding back; it made up, in a way,
for the funk of two nights earlier. When the mules and my horse were
through I dismounted and, lying flat, bathed my hands, and then, a tiny
sip at a time, began to drink. That was hard. When I stood up the heat
seemed to have gone, and the breeze was moist and sweet with the smell
of evening. I think I sang a little and waved my hands above my head,
and, at all events, I remember I lay on my back and rolled a cigarette;
and quite suddenly and without the slightest reason there were tears in
my eyes. Then I began to wonder what had become of Whitney; I hadn't
thought of him before. I got to my feet, and just as I did so I saw him
come over the little rise of sand, swaying in his saddle, and trying,
the fool, to make his horse run. He looked like a great scarecrow blown
out from some Indian maize-field into the desert. His clothes were torn
and h