“We hear it––but we can’t believe it––old Buntin’,” muttered Kit holding the burro from steady and stubborn attempts to break away, “and you are just loco enough to think you smell it.”
Then suddenly their feet struck rock again, not jagged or slippery fragments, but solid paving, and a whiff of faint mist drifted across his face in the gray of the first dawn, and the burro craned his neck forward at the very edge of a black rock basin where warm vapor struck the nostrils like a soporific.
The girl roused herself at a wordless exclamation from Rhodes, and began automatically helping Miguel from the saddle, and stripping him to the breechcloth.
Kit’s amazement startled him out of his lethargy of exhaustion. It was light enough now to see that her eyes were bloodshot, and her movements quick with a final desperation.
“There!” she said and motioned towards a shelving place in the rock, “there––medicine––all quick!”
She half lifted the staggering, unconscious Indian, and Kit, perceiving her intention, helped her with Miguel to the shallow edge of the basin where she rolled him over until he was submerged to the shoulder in the shallow bath, cupping her hands she scooped water and drenched his face.
“Why,––it’s warm!” muttered Kit.
“Medicine,” said Tula, and staggered away.
How Rhodes shed his own garments and slipped into the basin beside Miguel he never knew, only he knew he had found an early substitute for heaven. It was warm sulphur water,––tonic, refreshing and infinitely soothing to every sore muscle and every frazzled nerve. He ducked his head in it, tossed some more over the head and shoulders of the sleeping Indian, and then, submerged to his arms, he promptly drifted into slumber himself.
He wakened to the sound of Baby Bunting pawing around the grub pack. Hunger was his next conviction, for the heavenly rest in the medicine bath had taken every vestige of weariness away. He felt lethargic from the sulphur fumes, and more sleep was an enticing thought, yet he put it from him and got into his clothes after the use of a handkerchief as a bath towel. Miguel still slept and Kit bent over him in some concern, for the sleep appeared curiously deep and still, the breath coming lightly, yet he did not waken when lifted out of the water and covered with a poncho in the shade of a great yucca.