The day was still young, the terrain not too difficult, and Rhonda felt comparatively fresh and strong despite her night ride and the harrowing experiences of the last few hours—a combination of circumstances that buoyed her with hope.
The plain was dotted with trees, and the girl directed her steps so that she might at all times be as near as possible to one of these. Sometimes this required a zigzag course that lengthened the distance, but after her experience with the lion she did not dare be far from sanctuary at any time.
She turned often to look back in the direction she had come, lest the lion follow and surprise her. As the hours passed the sun shone down hotter and hotter. Rhonda commenced to suffer from hunger and thirst; her steps were dragging; her feet seemed weighted with lead. More and more often she stopped beneath the shade of a tree to rest. The mountains seemed as far away as ever. Doubts assailed her.
A shadow moved across the ground before her. She looked up. Circling above was a vulture. She shuddered. "I wonder if he only hopes," she said aloud, "or if he knows."
But she kept doggedly on. She would not give up—not until she dropped in her tracks. She wondered how long it would be before that happened.
Once as she was approaching a large black rock that lay across her path it moved and stood up, and she saw that it was a rhinoceros. The beast ran around foolishly for a moment, its nose in the air; then it charged. Rhonda clambered into a tree, and the great beast tore by like a steam locomotive gone must.
As it raced off with its silly little tail in air the girl smiled. She realized that she had forgotten her exhaustion under the stress of emergency, as bed-ridden cripples sometimes forget their affliction when the house catches fire.
The adventure renewed her belief in her ability to reach the river, and she moved on again in a more hopeful frame of mind. But as hot and dusty hour followed hot and dusty hour and the pangs of thirst assailed her with increasing violence, her courage faltered again in the face of the weariness that seemed to penetrate to the very marrow of her bones.
For a long time she had been walking in a depression of the rolling plain, her view circumscribed by the higher ground around her. The day was drawing to a close. Her lengthening shadow fell away behind her. The low sun was in her eyes.
She wanted to sit down and rest, but she was afraid that she would never get up again. More than that, she wanted to see what lay beyond the next rise in the ground. It is always the next summit that lures the traveller on even though experience may have taught him that he need expect nothing more than another rise of ground farther on.