On the following morning, when he had been tramping along for an hour or more, he espied far ahead the unmistakable green patch of thicket that heralded the presence of water. The sight stirred him. He walked well that morning, resting only a couple of hours at noon; but the green patch, after the manner of distant objects on the desert, seemed just as far away as when he saw it first. The time came, however, when there was no more illusion and he knew he was getting close to the place. At last he reached it, a large green thicket that choked the mouth of a narrow canyon. He found a spring welling from under the mountain base and sending a slender stream out to be swallowed by the sand.
Adam gave Jinny a drink before he unpacked her. There was a desirable camp site, except that it lacked dead firewood close at hand. Adam removed the pack, being careful to put boxes and bags together and to cover them with the canvas. Then he started out to look for some dead ironwood or mesquite to burn. All the desert growths, mostly greasewood and mesquite, were young and green. Adam searched in one direction and then in another, without so much as finding a stick. Next he walked west along the rocky wall, and had no better success until he came to a deep recession in the wall, full of brush; and here with considerable labor he collected a bundle of dry sticks. With this he trudged back toward camp.
Before long he imagined he saw smoke. “Queer how those smoke trees fool a fellow,” he said. And even after he thought he smelled smoke, he was sure of deception. But upon nearing the green thicket that hid his camp he actually did see thin blue smoke low down against the background of rocky wall. The sight alarmed him. The only explanation which offered itself to his perplexity was the possibility that a prospector had arrived at the spring during his absence and had started a fire. Adam began to hurry. His alarm increased to dread.
When he ran around the corner of thicket to his camp site he did see a fire. It was about burned out. There was no prospector, no signs of packs or burros. And Jinny was gone!
“What—what?” stammered Adam, dropping his bundle of sticks. He was bewildered. A sense of calamity beset him. He ran forward.
“Where—where’s my pack?” he cried.
The dying fire was but the smoldering remains of his pack. It had been burned. Blankets, boxes, bags had been consumed. Some blackened utensils lay on the ground near the charred remains of his canvas. Only then did the truth of this catastrophe burst upon him. All his food had been burned.
CHAPTER X
Some moments elapsed before the stunning effects of this loss had worn off enough to permit Adam’s mind to connect the cause of it with the disappearance of Jinny.