that he refrained from waking her even by a whisper. She would awaken
soon enough to thirst and hunger, perhaps, and then what was he to do?
If that looked-for help would only come now--while she still slept. For
it was part of his boyish fancy that if he could deliver her asleep and
undemonstrative of fear and suffering, he would be less blameful, and
she less mindful of her trouble. If it did not come--but he would not
think of that yet! If she was thirsty meantime--well, it might rain, and
there was always the dew which they used to brush off the morning grass;
he would take off his shirt and catch it in that, like a shipwrecked
mariner. It would be funny, and make her laugh. For himself he would not
laugh; he felt he was getting very old and grown up in this loneliness.

It was getting darker--they should be looking into the wagons now. A new
doubt began to assail him. Ought he not, now that he was rested, make
the most of the remaining moments of daylight, and before the glow faded
from the west, when he would no longer have any bearings to guide him?
But there was always the risk of waking her!--to what? The fear of being
confronted again with HER fear and of being unable to pacify her, at
last decided him to remain. But he crept softly through the grass, and
in the dust of the track traced the four points of the compass, as he
could still determine them by the sunset light, with a large printed W
to indicate the west! This boyish contrivance particularly pleased him.
If he had only had a pole, a stick, or even a twig, on which to tie his
handkerchief and erect it above the clump of mesquite as a signal to the
searchers in case they should be overcome by fatigue or sleep, he would
have been happy. But the plain was barren of brush or timber; he did
not dream that this omission and the very unobtrusiveness of his
hiding-place would be his salvation from a greater danger.

With the coming darkness the wind arose and swept the plain with a