"Go on and see, then! I'll follow! If there's water, look out for the drovers."
Wayland let go his hold of the bridle. Horse and mule shot down the sand bank. He saw them shoulder neck and neck along the white alkali bottom, then break to a gallop, the old man hanging to the pommel; then all disappeared round the end of the bank. Wayland slithered down the sand slope and dashed to the top of the next hill breathless. Below lay the glister of water, real water and no mirage, glassy, gray and sinister. The Ranger uttered a yell; then paused in his head-long descent.
The pony had plunged in belly deep; the mule had lowered its head; the old man was kneeling at the brink. Wayland saw him lave the water up with his hand: then throw it violently back. All at once, the grip of life snapped. Matthews was lying motionless on the sand. The horse was chocking its head up and down; the mule was stamping angrily with fore feet roiling the pool bottom. It had been one of the salt sinks that lie in the depressions of the Desert.
CHAPTER XVII
WHERE THE TRACKS ALL POINT ONE WAY
Wayland poured the last very driblets of water sediments from the skin bag. This, he forced past the old man's lips. Then he drew the unconscious form back on the saddle blankets, loosened the neck of the shirt, laved the temples and wrists with the salt water, tore strips of canvas from the tent square, wet that and laid it on the old man's forehead. He ran his hand inside the shirt and felt the heart. It was still beating, beating furiously, with faint flutterings, then accessions of fresh fury. The lips were black and swollen. The eyes were sunken; and the veins stood out in deadly clear purplish reticulation with splotches of transfused blood under the shrivelled skin of the hands. Then, he raised the old white head from the pack trees,—brave old warrior for right going down the Trail where the Tracks All Point One Way—, and somehow got a mouthful of brandy past the clinched teeth. The breath came fast and faint like the heart beats. Once, the eyes opened; but they were glazed and unseeing. Wayland laid the old head on the pillowed pack trees, fitting rest for frontiersman of the wilderness; then he stood up to think! A terrible passion of tenderness, of question, of defiance to God, rushed through his thoughts. The animals take their tragedies dumb and uncomplaining. Man alone has not learned the futility of shouting impotent reproaches at a brazen sky.
The Ranger unsaddled the pony. Then he tethered the mule and broncho by separate ropes to the boulders. He placed the brandy flask by the old man's right hand. He thought a moment. Then he laid the loaded rifle close to the same hand.
The eyes were still staring wide open unseeing. The purple lips began babbling wordless words, words of the sea, words that ran into one another inarticulate. Wayland stooped and took the left hand in his own palm. It was cold and heavy, a thing detached from life; and the purple swollen lips were still babbling in inarticulate whispers. Should he leave him to die there alone; or go forth to seek; seek what?
The Ranger stooped and pressed his lips to the blood-blotched back of the faithful shrivelled old hand. He did not shed a tear. We weep only when we are half hurt.
Wayland seized the Service axe and uncased his own rifle. Then in words that were not worshipful, not bending his knees, but standing with his hat off, he uttered what may have been a prayer, or may have been blasphemy. I leave you to judge: "By God, if there is a God, why doesn't He waken up? If there is a God, does He stand for right? Is there such a thing as Right; or is Right the dream of fools? I want to know! If there is a God, I want God to speak out clear and plain, right now, in plain facts, so I can understand, and not so blamed long ago that a plain fellow can't make out what's the right thing to do."