The sun soon drove away the early mists and beat down upon the two men mercilessly from a blazingly hot sky.  Nowhere was there any shade except the tiny pools of shadow at the roots of the scrub brush.  The heat, the dry air shimmering over the glowing sands, abetted by the many high-balls of yesterday, soon engendered a scorching thirst, and as mile after mile of the treeless desert slipped behind they found no water.  Over and over Hapgood was tempted to turn back.  He felt that his shoulders, from which he had removed his coat, were blistering under the sharp rays of the sun.  At every swinging stride his horse made he felt the skin being rubbed off of his legs where they rubbed against the saddle leather.  His soft hands were cut by the reins, he was sore from the tips of his fingers to the soles of his feet.  But as each fresh temptation assailed him a glance at Conniston, riding a few paces ahead, made him pull himself together.  For some day the old man would relent, and then Roger Hapgood would see that for every agonized mile now he would be amply repaid.

And no water would they find until Indian Creek was thirty miles behind them unless they turned from their way and rode a couple of miles to the westward where the straggling stream crawled through the sand.  It was as well that they did not know, for the stream, like many of its kind in the dry parts of the West, ran for the greater part of its course underground, showing only here and there in a pool, where, beneath the sand, there was the hard-pan through which the water could not seep.

They had left the town behind them at a lope.  Now they rode at a walk, curbing their horses’ impatience with tight-drawn reins.  They had thought to have reached the brown hills and shade before the day’s heat was upon them.  But now it was already intense, stifling, awaking from its light doze almost as the sun rolled upward across the low horizon.

And now the temptation upon Roger Hapgood, urging him to turn back—­back toward the little town, hateful yesterday, but spelling now at least the courtyard to comfort—­was so strong that he would not have had strength to resist had he not realized that the ride back would be longer than the ride on to water.  He made no answer to Conniston’s sallies, but, sullenly silent, clung to his reins with one hand, to the horn of his saddle with the other, lifting his head now and again to gaze with red-rimmed eyes ahead along the dusty, flat stretch of the desert, for the most part head down, the picture of misery.

Conniston, feeling the heat riotous in his own veins, feeling the ache of fatigued muscles, felt a sudden pity for Hapgood.  And still, even through his own discomfort, there laughed always a certain something in his buoyant nature which saw the humorous in the adventure.