“Show me drink!” commanded he, hurrying his horse over to the spring where the girls had drank.
One taste of the water and he made a wry face.
“You say you tak him?” asked the guide anxiously.
“Yes, lots of it,” replied Ruth.
“Him mos’ bad as dem bad land. Dat alkali water.”
“What do you mean, Tally?” anxiously asked several girls.
“Him mak mucha ache here,” explained Tally, placing his hands over his stomach and bending low with an agonized expression.
But the damage was done and so the scouts had to make the best of the case. Consequently, it was not long before Ruth was tied into knots and hardly able to sit in the saddle. The others, according to the quantity they had taken, were griped also. This did not add anything to the pleasure of the ride across the hot dry sand. But as long as they had essayed to cross that day, they kept on going slowly, hoping that with each cramp the scouts would begin to recover from the effects of the water.
Tally and his friend had been so certain that they would reach the other side of the desert before dark, that no one felt the slightest apprehension on that score. But the slowness with which the scouts had to travel made it dubious whether the riders would gain the other side before night.
Here and there, scattered over the desert sand, were queer craggy formations of lava, as if some volcanic eruption had thrown the heaps of burnt-out lava broadcast, to rest for ages upon the sea of waste. There was a constant wind blowing across the desert, that carried the tiniest particles of sand with it, and these cut into faces and uncovered parts of the flesh of horses and riders. This stinging sand added no little to the misery of the suffering scouts.