"Round and about to the false water until he is very weary," said the coyote; and it seemed to Alan that he must follow where the gray dog went in a maze of moving shadows. He trembled and fell from weakness a great many times and lay with his face in the shelter of the prickle bushes, but always he got up and went on again.
"Have a care," cried the voice in the air, "here comes one of his own kind."
"What and where?" said the coyote.
"It is a brown one riding on a horse; she comes up from the gully of big rocks."
"Does she follow a trail?" panted the coyote.
"She follows no trail, but rides fast in this direction," croaked the voice, but Alan took no interest in it. He did not know that it was the Basket Woman coming to rescue him. He thought of the merry-go-round, for he saw that he had come back to the creosote bush where he had spent the night, and he thought the earth had come round with him, for it rocked and reeled as he went. His tongue hung out of his mouth and his lips cracked and bled, his feet were blistered and aching from the sharp rocks, the hot sands, and cactus thorns. Round and round with him went scrub and sand, on one side the shadow of black wings, and on the other the smooth flow of mirage water which he might never reach. Through it all he could hear the soft biff, biff of the broad wings and the long, hungry, whining howl that seemed to detach itself from any throat and come upon him from all quarters of the quivering air. Dizzily went the merry-go-round, and now it seemed that the false water swung nearer, that it went around with him, that it bore him up, for he no longer felt the earth under him, that it buoyed and floated him far out from the place where he had been, that it grew deliciously cool at last, that it laved his face and flowed in his parched throat; and at last he opened his eyes and found the Basket Woman trickling water in his mouth from her wicker water bottle. It was noon of his second day from home when she found him on Cactus Flat, by going straight to the point where she saw the black wings hanging in the air. She laid him on the horse before her and dripped water in his mouth and coaxed and called to him, but never left off riding nor halted until she came up with others of the search party who had followed up by the place where Alan had climbed to the mesa, and followed slowly by a faint trail. But to Alan it was all as if he had dreamed that the Basket Woman had brought him as before from the valley of Corn Water. The first that he realized was that his father had him, and that his mother was crying and kissing the Basket Woman. It was several days before he was able to be about again, and then only under promise that he would go no farther than the spring. The first thing he saw when he looked up was the buzzards high up over the mesa making a merry-go-round in the clear blue, and it was then he remembered that he had not yet found out what it was all about.