Somehow he crawled out of the wash. It was fifty feet to the hole now.... He cut it to twenty and lay gasping, trembling, burning, Nigger close beside him, first on one side, then the other, sometimes at his feet. Never, though, standing motionless in his path....
It was ten feet.... Then five. Lifting eye lids was a world of effort in itself. His mouth was open, breath sucking in the dust, but he could not close it. He made a hand's breadth and stopped. His limbs twitched spasmodically and drew up. He made a straining, strangling sound, gathering all the life that remained in his body. He rose on his elbows and on one knee. He swayed forward, he scrambled drunkenly. He pitched down and as he went he made one last, awkward attempt to push his own weight along. Then fell ... short.
The right hand half propped his body up. It slid slowly forward, impelled by the weight upon it alone, shoving light sand in its way.... Then went limp and extended.
The tip of his second finger just dented the surface of the water in the pool!
The horse switched his tail slowly, as if disconsolate at a waning hope.
"Hang it all," he might have thought. "Here I thought you were going to make it and you can't! I wish I knew how to help!"
He sighed again, this time as if in despair. He waited a long time before drinking himself as if hoping that his master would move. But the body was motionless ... utterly. The shallow, quick come and go of breath was not in evidence. Two-Bits had done all that he could do for himself....
Nigger moved to the lip of rock which held the water against the cliff. He snuffed, as if to tantalize himself and then plunged his nose into the place, guzzling greedily. Great gulps ran down his long throat, little shoots of water left his lips beside the bit and fell back. He breathed and drank and made great sounds in satisfying his thirst. He lifted his head and caught his breath and let it slip out in a sigh of satisfaction ... drank again.
Finally he was through and stepped back, holding his lips close, as horses will whose mouth contains one more swallow. Then he stared at Two-Bits and moved close to him and chewed instinctively on the bit, letting the water that he did not need spill from his mouth....
It fell squarely on the back of the man's neck, spattering on his hair, running down under his shirt, driving out the flies....