He took fairly good care of himself. At intervals he dropped in the shade of a joshua-tree, and, after struggling to bite the cholla thorns from his feet, he would doze for a few minutes, then start on again. His distemper was easier in the sun, although his fever and the desert heat soon evaporated the moisture that he had absorbed at the Wrenn's.
About three o'clock he stopped, wrinkled his black muzzle, and raised his finely domed head. The trail now lay along the foot of the Hualpai. He turned abruptly to the right, off the main trail, and trotted into a little cañon. On the other side of a rock that hid it from the main trail was Jim Baldwin's tent. Jim came to the door, at the sound of Saxe Gotha drinking up his little spring. Jim was a lover of dogs. He did not know Saxe Gotha's breed, but he did recognize his promise of distinction.
"Howdy, old man!" said Jim. "Have a can of beef!"
Saxe Gotha responded to the greeting with a puppy gambol, and devoured the beef with gusto. Jim went into the tent for a rope. When he returned, the pup was a receding dot on the north trail.
About four o'clock, the tri-weekly stage from the Happy Luck camp met Saxe Gotha. Dick Furman, the driver, stopped the panting horses and invited the huge puppy to ride with him. Saxe Gotha wriggled, chased his tail round once with a bark like the booming of a town clock, and with this exchange of courtesies Dick drove on southward, and the pup continued on his way to the north.
As darkness came on, he slowed his pace, paused and sniffed, and again turned off the main trail to a rough path up the side of the mountain. Before a silent hut of adobe, he found a half-barrel of water. Saxe Gotha rose on his hind legs, thrust his nose into the barrel and drank lustily. Then he stood rigid, with uncropped ears lifted and nose thrust upward, sniffing. After a minute he whined. The business to the north was pressing; the pup did not want to stop; yet he still stood, listening, sniffing. At last, he started back to the main trail; when he reached it, he stopped once more, and once more sniffed and listened and whined; then he deliberately turned back to the silent hut, and trotted along the narrow trail that led up behind it to the west.
A short distance up the mountain, clear in the light of the moon, a tiny spring bubbled out of the ground, forming a pool the size of a wash-basin. A man lay beside the pool. Saxe Gotha walked up to him, whining, and then walked round and round him, sniffing him from head to foot. He licked his face and pawed at his shoulder with his clumsy paw. But the man lay in the heavy slumber of utter exhaustion. He was a tall, lean, strong young fellow, in his early twenties. His empty canteen, his pick and bar beside him, with a sack of ore, showed that he was just back from a prospecting trip. He had evidently run short of water and, after a forced march to the spring, where he had relieved his thirst, had dropped asleep on the spot.
At last Saxe Gotha lay down with his nose on the young man's shoulder, and his brown eyes were alert in the moonlight. Saxe Gotha had found his man!