"Not a bit," she answered. "Don't worry about me."
He laid a hand on her shoulder and looked into her face with eyes that said more than his tongue could.
"You're as good a man as any of us. When we get to California we'll have fun laughing over this."
He gave the shoulder a shake, then drew back and picked up his rifle.
"I'll get you a rabbit for supper if I can," he said with his cackling laugh. "That's about the best I can do."
He left her trailing off into the reddened reaches of the sage, and she went back to the rock, thinking that in some overlooked hollow, water might linger. She passed the mouth of the dead spring, then skirted the spot where David lay, a motionless shape under the canopy of the blanket. A few paces beyond him a buttress extended and, rounding it, she found a triangular opening inclosed on three sides by walls, their summits orange with the last sunlight. There had once been water here for the grasses, and thin-leafed plants grew rank about the rock's base, then outlined in sere decay what had evidently been the path of a streamlet. She knelt among them, thrusting her hands between their rustling stalks, jerking them up and casting them away, the friable soil spattering from their roots.
The heat was torrid, the noon ardors still imprisoned between the slanting walls. Presently she sat back on her heels, and with an earthy hand pushed the moist hair from her forehead. The movement brought her head up, and her wandering eyes, roving in morose inspection, turned to the cleft's opening. Courant was standing there, watching her. His hands hung loose at his sides, his head was drooped forward, his chin lowered toward his throat. The position lent to his gaze a suggestion of animal ruminance and concentration.
"Why don't you get David to do that?" he said slowly.
The air in the little cleft seemed to her suddenly heavy and hard to breathe. She caught it into her lungs with a quick inhalation. Dropping her eyes to the weeds she said sharply, "David's sick. He can't do anything. You know that."
"He that ought to be out in the desert there looking for water's lying asleep under a blanket. That's your man."