He stopped, gave a rapid glance round the horizon, and then bent over the sand again.
"They can't be far off then?" asked Gray, who had followed his glance with breathless impatience.
"Too far off for me anyways," Lumley answered, with a quick upward look at him. "I'd tried that afore I answered your call, partner. Did you think 'twas me, now, when you got an answer? I knew 'twas you in a minute."
"I don't know; I forget. What's the good of wasting time like this?" cried Gray, getting suddenly on his feet. "Tell me which way to go. I can do it now, but in another hour or two it will be too late. Which way? Be quick!"
"It can't be more than half a dozen miles or so," returned Lumley in a slow reflective tone that almost drove Gray out of his senses with impatience. "You make a bee-line for the trees, and then strike off to the left where the ridge is, and it's just over the ridge that there's water. Yards of it, partner, all shining and sparkling in the moonlight. Why, you could be close to it in an hour almost. And there's no mistake about it; it isn't no salt-pan, but fresh water fit for a king to drink. I've seen it afore me all the time I've been lyin' here. Can't you see it, partner?"
It was a maddening vision which Lumley's words had called up before Gray. A cool stretch of limpid, shining water—there it lay before him, close to him. He was kneeling down by it, plunging his fevered face into it, slaking the thirst that was burning his life away. And it meant life, that cool, delicious draught; it meant more than life—it meant opportunity for atonement, for undoing, as far as in him lay, the wrong he had done, for proving his repentance a real and lasting one.
Lumley was stooping over the sand, but his eyes were on Gray's face, and he saw all the eagerness in it. He saw it, and interpreted it according to his own nature. He broke into a harsh laugh, and with a sweep of one hand on the sand, he destroyed the rough chart he had made.
"You'd like to start this minute, wouldn't you, partner? and the crows might make their meal off me. I saw a flock of them nigh here yesterday; they're waiting for their feast. You wouldn't like to disappoint them, would you?"
Gray did not comprehend him in the least.
"Don't waste time like this," he said imploringly; "let me be off at once. I could be back to you by sunrise if I have good luck. And you have a bottle about you, haven't you? Let me have it. And who knows?—I may fall in with the horse."