CHAPTER XIV
OUT OF THE DESERT
“Good horse. Good horse. Good boy. Goldbug––go it! I know you’re dying, but so am I. Keep it up a little while longer––Good boy.”
The young man encouraged his horse, while half asleep from utter weariness and faint with hunger and thirst. The poor beast scrambled over the rocks up a steep trail that seemed to have been long unused, or indeed it might be no trail at all, but only a channel worn by fierce, narrow torrents during the rainy season, now sun-baked and dry.
The fall rains were late this year, and the yellow plains below furnished neither food nor drink for either man or beast. The herds of buffalo had long since wandered to fresher spaces nearer the river beds. The young man’s flask was empty, and it was twenty-seven hours since either he or his horse had tasted anything. Now they had reached the mountains he hoped to find water and game if he could only hold out a little longer. Up and still up the lean horse scrambled with nose to earth and quivering flanks, and the young man, leaning forward and clinging to his seat as he reeled like one drunken, still murmured words of encouragement. “Good boy––Goldbug, go it. Good horse, keep it up.”
All at once the way opened out on a jutting crest and made a sharp turn to the right, and the horse paused on the verge so suddenly that his rider lost his hold and fell headlong over into a scrub oak that caught him and held him suspended in its tough and twisted branches above a chasm so deep that the buzzards sailed on widespread wings round and round in the blue air beneath him.
He lay there still and white as death, mercifully unconscious, while an eagle with a wild scream circled about and perched on a lightning-blasted tree far above and looked down on him.
For a moment the yellow horse swayed weakly on the brink, then feeling himself relieved of his burden, he stiffened himself to a last great effort and held on along the path which turned abruptly away from the edge of the cliff and broadened out among low bushes and stunted trees. Here again the horse paused and stretched his neck and bit off the tips of the dry twigs near him, then turned his head and whinnied to call his master, and pricked his ears to listen; but he only heard the scream of the eagle overhead, and again he walked on, guided by an instinct as mysterious and unerring as the call of conscience to a human soul.
Good old beast! He had not much farther to go. Soon there was a sound of water in the air––a continuous roar, muffled and deep. The path wound upward, then descended gradually until it led him to an open, grassy space, bordered by green trees. Again he turned his head and gave his intelligent call. Why did not his master respond? Why did he linger behind when here was grass and water––surely water, for the smell of it was fresh and sweet. But it was well he called, for his friendly nicker fell on human ears.