If he hounded along the trail, perhaps he might overhaul the other two.  Then, then if he did perish in the Desert, he would not have perished for naught!  It was then, the earth performed the acrobatic feat of heaving up, and he fell!  This time, he knew he had fallen.  It was no trip.  He was down and out and done for; and he knew it.  He rose to his knees steadying himself on his Service axe.  Then, it came again, the silver strip of mountain on the sky line with the cool lakes and the blue haze, and her face, the face in the Watts’ picture of “the Happy Warrior,” weaving the spell, receding from him, drawing him with the love light in her eyes and the passion kiss on her lips, beckoning, beckoning; he would rise and follow her from the dead if she beckoned with that light in her eyes.  She was receding not along the trail of the fleeing Desert runners, but down the dragged track of the body that had crawled to the foot of a sand bank.  Wayland never knew whether he staggered or crept down the trail of the dragged body away from the hoof prints of the drovers’ horses across the alkali sink; but between him and the silver strip of mountain on the far skyline, above the yellow sand so hot to his palms, beckoned her face, the love light in her eyes, weaving the spell.  Then the coyote had bounded into the air, and the red-combed Desert condors, the scavengers of an outcast world, rose from their quarry; and Wayland, fevered, delirious, laughing, crying, kneeled over the body of a man lying on his face with his bloody hand clutched in death grip round an upright post driven into the alkali bottoms, a post with a drinking cup hung on the notched crotch, the Desert sign of a water spring beneath the drifted sands.

Wayland pushed the body aside.  The man’s face was red-smeared.  He was dead.  Wayland had to unlock the clutched fingers from the post.  Somewhere, from the submerged consciousness of forgotten college lore came memory that the water table lay ten feet deep beneath the Desert silt.  The Ranger slid down the sand drift and was chopping, hacking, digging, into the side of the bank, thanking God; God was on the job after all; scooping the sand drift out with his naked hand, burrowing at the earth as the animals of the wilderness-struggle tear in maddened thirst for the hidden life beneath the sand death.  He heard the suck and gurgle of the water, not the joyous silver laugh of Northern springs, but the sullen coming of water compelled; and his lips were at the sand; drinking, drinking, drinking.  Then, he suddenly remembered her face.  He looked up.  Gone the silver strip of shining mountain; gone the mirage of the crystal pool; darkness, velvet pansy darkness of the Desert night; and an earth bat winged past his face.  Even as he drank he felt the puff and whirl of the wind rising; he laughed.  He felt the cool water trickle and settle and pool in the sand hole.  Then he laved his temples and wrists, and laughed softly, and called a low long tremulous call; that foolish Saxon word he had told her to look up in the dictionary.