This may not sound like tragedy as I tell it, but I think it was tragedy to her. I tried to persuade her that it must be her imagination about the women at Arco; or, if some of them did talk,—as indeed I myself had heard, to my shame and disgust,—I told her I had never known that place where there was not one woman, at least, who could understand and help another in her trouble.
"I don't know of any," she said simply.
There was no more to do but ride on, feeling like her executioner; but
"Ride hooly, ride hooly, now, gentlemen,
Ride hooly now wi' me,"
came into my mind; and no man ever kept beside a "wearier burd," on a sadder journey.
At dusk we came to Belgian Flat, and here Maverick, dismounting, mixed a little whisky in his flask with water which he dipped from the pool. She must have recalled who dug the well, and with whom she had drunk in the morning. He held it to her lips. She rejected it with a strong shudder of disgust.
"Drink it!" he commanded. "You'll kill yourself, carryin' on like this." He pressed it on her, but she turned away her face like a sick and rebellious child.
"Maybe she'll drink it for you," said Maverick, with bitter patience, handing me the cup.
"Will you?" I asked her gently. She shook her head, but at the same time she let me take her hand, and put it down from her face, and I held the cup to her lips. She drank it, every drop. It made her deathly sick, and I took her off her horse, and made a pillow of my coat, so that she could lie down. In ten minutes she was asleep. Maverick covered her with his coat after she was no longer conscious.
We built a fire on the edge of the lava, for we were both chilled and both miserable, each for his own part in that day's work.