It was then, and not till then, that Jack gave way. He flung himself down despairingly on the hot ground under the cheerless arms of a huge yucca.
“What is to become of me?” he cried in a dismayed tone. “What shall I do? Evidently this part of the country is good for neither ranching or mining, and is uninhabited. I might tramp on for days without finding a soul to help me. Am I doomed to end my life in this dreary place?”
These and a hundred other gloomy thoughts flitted through the boy’s mind as, utterly exhausted and unnerved, he lay on the ground beneath the yucca. What were his chums doing? he wondered. No doubt by this time a search party had been organized to seek for him, but Jack owned, with a sinking of the heart, that it was beyond the range of possibilities, almost, that they should ever find the Pool of Death and the secret valley.
“No,” he owned with bitter resignation, “my bones will bleach in this God–forgotten place, and none will ever know my fate.”
Then he thought of his home and his father, the stalwart ranchman, and tears welled up in his eyes and a great lump rose in his throat.
“Oh, it’s hard to have to die like this,” he moaned, “and yet there is nothing to be done. True, I may live for a day or two yet. I can start out again to–morrow morning and go on stumbling along till I drop exhausted.”
It was at this bitter moment that a sudden recollection of a favorite saying of his father’s came into the boy’s mind: “Never give up while you’ve a kick left in you.”
Jack thought of the bluff ranchman as the saying came back to him with poignant force.
“Never give up while you’ve a kick left in you.”
“For shame, Jack Merrill,” he said half aloud, “for shame, to be giving up this way. You’ve a kick left in you, many of them perhaps. What would your dad say if he saw you sitting down like a girl or a baby and giving in before you had to? Don’t you dare to do it again.”