“Harvey!” Polly’s voice was tremulous with appeal, “I don’t want to be left behind alone.”
Patton gave her a quick, sidewise glance. “All right,” he said brusquely. “You can come.”
To show that she was equal to the journey, Polly kept in the lead all the remainder of that night, flitting light-footed, like the spirit of some good guiding angel.
Shortly after dawn, Blandy called a halt and prepared for a rest of several hours. He fixed the square of sacking to the ground by two of its corners. The other two corners he fastened to mesquite stakes. The result was an improvised tent which faced the north. This shelter was for Patton and Polly. When it was ready, Blandy took the yellow umbrella, raised it, went aside to where were the canteens, and lay down.
By noon, it was impossible to sleep because of the heat, which was so intense that the grey, incrusted ground burned the hand that touched it. The travellers did not set forth at once. Seated under their shelters, they looked out upon a round lake that glimmered in a near-by hollow of the desert—a lake encircled with a beach of amethyst.
With that sheet of water glistening before him, Patton drank often and deep. And when, at four, he rose with the others to continue on, he slung one of the large canteens over a shoulder. The glimmering lake moved as the pack-train moved, occupying one hollow, then dissolving to appear in another, and still another. Patton lifted his canteen to his lips every half mile.
Blandy noted it. “Say! You’ll have to learn to be careful about your drinkin’ if you go out much on the desert,” he warned. “More’n one tenderfoot has gone luny for water and took to follerin’ them spook lakes. Chaw on a raisin for a change.”
No halt was made for supper. The three ate as they travelled. The sun declined. The last shining sheet of water disappeared. Twilight came, and with twilight, the stars, which burned large and white in the cloudless expanse of the heavens. Through the starlight, through the late moonlight, and through the dawn of a second day, they trudged on.
It was shortly after sunrise that a giant yucca came into sight ahead. It was branched on either side; and from a distance looked like some huge figure that had been caught in action and suddenly trans-fixed.
“Hello!” cried Blandy. “My friend John Jenkins! We’re half-way.”