It became agonizing to listen to the panting and gasping of our horses. Their eyes grew staring and bloodshot. We suffered, ourselves, hardly less than they. It was cruel to press on. But we must hinder a crueller cruelty. Love against Time,—Vengeance against Time! We must not flinch for any weak humanity to the noble allies that struggled on with us, without one token of resistance.
Fulano suffered least. He turned his brave eye back, and beckoned me with his ear to listen, while he seemed to say: “See, this is my Endurance! I hold my Power ready still to show.”
And he curved his proud neck, shook his mane like a banner, and galloped the grandest of all.
We came to a broad strip of sand, the dry bed of a mountain-torrent. The trail followed up this disappointing path. Heavy ploughing for the tired horses! How would they bear the rough work down the ravine yet to come?
Suddenly our leader pulled up and sprang from the saddle.
“Look!” he cried, “how those fellows spent their time, and saved ours. Thank Heaven for this! We shall save her, surely, now.”
It was WATER! No need to go back to Pindar to know that it was “the Best.”
They had dug a pit deep in the thirsty sand, and found a lurking river buried there. Nature never questioned what manner of men they were that sought. Murderers flying from vengeance and planning now another villain outrage,—still impartial Nature did not change her laws for them. Sunshine, air, water, life,—these boons of hers,—she gave them freely. That higher boon of death, if they were to receive, it must be from some other power, greater than the undiscriminating force of Nature.
Good luck and good omen, this well of water in the sand! It proved that our chase had suffered as we, and had been delayed as we. Before they had dared to pause and waste priceless moments here, their horses must have been drooping terribly. The pit was nearly five feet deep. A good hour’s work, and no less, had dug it with such tools as they could bring. I almost laughed to think of the two, slowly bailing out the sliding sand with a tin plate, perhaps, and a frying-pan, while a score of miles away upon the desert we three were riding hard upon their tracks to follow them the fleeter for this refreshment they had left. “Sic vos non vobis!” I was ready to say triumphantly; but then I remembered the third figure in their group,—a woman, like a Sibyl, growing calmer as her peril grew, and succor seemed to withdraw. And the pang of this picture crushed back into my heart any thoughts but a mad anxiety and a frenzy to be driving on.
We drank thankfully of this well by the wayside. No gentle beauty hereabouts to enchant us to delay. No grand old tree, the shelter and the landmark of the fountain, proclaiming an oasis near. Nothing but bare, hot sand. But the water was pure, cool, and bright. It had come underground from the Sierra, and still remembered its parent snows. We drank and were grateful, almost to the point of pity. Had we been but avengers, like Armstrong, my friend and I could wellnigh have felt mercy here, and turned back pardoning. But rescue was more imperative than vengeance. Our business tortured us, as with the fanged scourge of Tisiphone, while we dallied. We grudged these moments of refreshment. Before night fell down the west, and night was soon to be climbing up the east, we must overtake,—and then?