Susan's laconic "The spring's dry," was not necessary. He fell forward on the seat with a moan, his head propped in his hands, his fingers buried in his hair. Courant sent a look of furious contempt over his abject figure, then gave a laugh that fell on the silence bitter as a curse. Daddy John without a word moved off and began unhitching the mules. Even in Susan pity was, for the moment, choked by a swell of disgust. Had she not had the other men to measure him by, had she not within her own sturdy frame felt the spirit still strong for conflict, she might still have known only the woman's sympathy for the feebler creature. But they were a trio steeled and braced for invincible effort, and this weakling, without the body and the spirit for the enterprise, was an alien among them.
She went to the back of the wagon and opened the mess chest. As she picked out the supper things she began to repent. The lean, bent figure and sunken head kept recurring to her. She saw him not as David but as a suffering outsider, and for a second, motionless, with a blackened skillet in her hand, had a faint, clairvoyant understanding of his soul's desolation amid the close-knit unity of their endeavor. She dropped the tin and went back to the front of the wagon. He was climbing out, hanging tremulous to the roof support, a haggard spectacle, with wearied eyes and skin drawn into fine puckerings across the temples. Pity came back in a remorseful wave, and she ran to him and lifted his arm to her shoulder. It clasped her hard and they walked to where at the rock's base the sage grew high. Here she laid a blanket for him and spread another on the top of the bushes, fastening it to the tallest ones till it stretched, a sheltering canopy, over him. She tried to cheer him with assurances that water would be found at the next halting place. He was listless at first, seeming not to listen, then the life in her voice roused his sluggish faculties, his cheeks took color, and his dull glance lit on point after point in its passage to her face, like the needle flickering toward the pole.
"If I could get water enough to drink, I'd be all right," he said. "The pains are gone."
"They must find it soon," she answered, lifting the weight of his fallen courage, heavy as his body might have been to her arms. "This is a traveled road. There must be a spring somewhere along it."
And she continued prying up the despairing spirit till the man began to respond, showing returning hope in the eagerness with which he hung on her words. When he lay sinking into drowsy quiet, she stole away from him to where the camp was spread about the unlit pyre of Daddy John's sage brush. It was too early for supper, and the old man, with the accouterments of the hunt slung upon his person and his rifle in his hand, was about to go afield after jack rabbit.
"It's a bad business this," he said in answer to the worry she dared not express. "The animals can't hold out much longer."
"What are we to do? There's only a little water left in one of the casks."
"Low's goin' to strike across for the other trail. He's goin' after supper, and he says he'll ride all night till he gets it. He thinks if he goes due that way," pointing northward, "he can strike it sooner than by goin' back."
They looked in the direction he pointed. Each bush was sending a phenomenally long shadow from its intersection with the ground. There was no butte or hummock to break the expanse between them and the faint, far silhouette of mountains. Her heart sank, a sinking that fatigue and dread of thirst had never given her.
"He may lose us," she said.