But presently as he journeyed he saw lying to his right a wide, fertile place, with fruit-trees and water everywhere. “Peaches too!” he sang out, and sprang off to run, but checked himself in five steps. “I don’t seem able to stop your foolish talking,” he said, “but you shall not chase around like that. You’ll stay with me. I tell you that’s a sham. Look at it.” Obedient, he looked hard at it, and the cactus and rocks thrust through the watery image of the lake like two photographs on the same plate. He shouted with strangling triumph, and continued shouting until brier-roses along a brook and a farm-house unrolled to his left, and he ran half-way there, calling his mother’s name. “Why, you fool, she’s dead!” He looked slowly at his cut hands, for he had fallen among stones. “Dead, back in Kentucky, ever so long ago,” he murmured, softly. “Didn’t stay to see you get wicked.” Then he grew stern again. “You’ve showed yourself up, and you can’t tell land from water. You’re going to let the boys take you straight. I don’t trust you.”
He started the mules, and caught hold of his horse’s tail, and they set out in single file, held steady by their instinct, stumbling ahead for the water they knew among the mountains. Mules led, and the shouting man brought up the rear, clutching the white tail like a rudder, his feet sliding along through the stones. The country grew higher and rougher, and the peaks blazed in the hot sky; slate and sand and cactus below, gaping cracks and funnelled erosions above, rocks like monuments slanting up to the top pinnacles; supreme Arizona, stark and dead in space, like an extinct planet, flooded blind with eternal brightness. The perpetual dominating peaks caught Genesmere’s attention. “Toll on!” he cried to them. “Toll on, you tall mountains. What do you care? Summer and winter, night and day, I’ve known you, and I’ve heard you all along. A man can’t look but he sees you walling God’s country from him, ringing away with your knell.”
He must have been lying down during some time, for now he saw the full moon again, and his animals near him, and a fire blazing that himself had evidently built. The coffee-pot sat on it, red-hot and split open. He felt almost no suffering at all, but stronger than ever in his life, and he heard something somewhere screaming “Water! water! water!” fast and unceasing, like an alarm-clock. A rattling of stones made him turn, and there stood a few staring cattle. Instantly he sprang to his feet, and the screaming stopped. “Round ’em up, Russ Genesmere! It’s getting late!” he yelled, and ran among the cattle, whirling his rope. They dodged weakly this way and that, and next he was on the white horse urging him after the cows, who ran in a circle. One struck the end of a log that stuck out from the fire, splintering the flames and embers, and Genesmere followed on the tottering horse through the sparks, swinging his rope and yelling in the full moon: “Round ’em up! round ’em up! Don’t you want to make camp? All the rest of the herd’s bedded down along with the ravens.”
The white horse fell and threw him by the edge of a round hole, but he did not know it till he opened his eyes and it was light again, and the mountains still tolling. Then like a crash of cymbals the Tinaja beat into his recognition. He knew the slate rock; he saw the broken natural stairs. He plunged down them arms forward like a diver’s, and ground his forehead against the bottom. It was dry. His bloodshot eyes rolled once up round the sheer walls. Yes, it was the Tinaja, and his hands began to tear at the gravel. He flung himself to fresh places, fiercely grubbing with his heels, biting into the sand with his teeth; while above him in the cañon his placid animals lay round the real Tinaja Bonita, having slaked their thirst last night, in time, some thirty yards from where he now lay bleeding and fighting the dust in the dry twin hole.
He heard voices, and put his hands up to something round his head. He was now lying out in the light, with a cold bandage round his forehead, and a moist rag on his lips.
“Water!” He could just make the whisper.
But Lolita made a sign of silence.
“Water!” he gasped.
She shook her head, smiling, and moistened the rag. That must be all just now.
His eye sought and travelled, and stopped short, dilating; and Lolita screamed at his leap for the living well.