“I wish,” he finally began, after a long pause, and ceased speaking as a wave of sickening despair swept over his soul. The idleness of the phrase mocked him; the folly of wishing anything, helpless there in the bitterness of desolation, came home to him with cruel force. Then the ache of his spirit’s yearning drew his clenched hands up toward the blue vault.
“I wish,” he breathed, his heart pounding, his brain awhirl with a sudden vision of the infinite wonder of things, “I wish that—if there is such a thing as God in the world I might come to know it.”
Slowly his hands came down to his sides. The sentinel of the rocks gave a soft little call of reassurance to the flock, which had halted, observant of the gesture, and the birds resumed their feeding. Gard turned for another look at the snowy ramparts on high; at the vast plain below. All their horror was gone, for him, and he began the descent of the mountain with the peaceful visage of one who has been in a good place.
Far into the night he awoke with the feeling of something stirring near him. In the dim firelight he could make out a shadowy figure on the hearth, and he sprang up in haste. A second glance, however, as he sat upon his ocotilla bed, showed him that there was no harm in the visitor shivering there by the coals.
It was a burro, and the listless pose, the drooping ears and the trembling knees proclaimed a sick burro. It was too miserable even to move, when Gard threw an armful of brush on the fire and speedily had a blaze by which he could see the intruder plainly. His first glance revealed a jagged, dreadful sore on the shoulder next to the light.
Speaking very gently, he drew nearer to the burro and though the little creature trembled violently, it let him bend down and examine the wound.
A great spike of the long, tough crucifixion-thorn had somehow become imbedded in the flesh, and the whole surface of the shoulder was swollen and inflamed. Gard made a little sound of pity in his throat, and the burro, turning, tried to lick the sore.
“No use to do that yet, Jinny,” the man said. “That thorn’s got to come out first.”
The burro had probably never before been touched by hands; but not for nothing was Jinny wide between the ears. She scrutinized her would-be helper closely, for a moment, through her long lashes, and drooped her wise-looking little gray head still lower. Gard threw another armful of light stuff on the fire and when the blaze was brightest attacked the thorn, using one of his sharp arrows as a probe.
Once or twice the creature flinched. Once she snapped her strong teeth at the hurting side; but Gard worked steadily and quickly, and presently had the offender out.