Day died lingeringly. The sun gradually lost its cruelty, but a
partial relief from the heat merely emphasized the traveler's
thirst and muscular distress. Onward she plodded, using her eyes
as carefully as she knew how. She watched the evening flight of
the doves, thinking to guide herself by their course, but she was
not shrewd enough to read the signs correctly. The tracks she
found were old, for the most part, and they led in no particular
direction, nowhere uniting into anything like a trail. She
wondered, if she could bring herself to drink the blood of a jack-
rabbit, and if it would quench her thirst. But the thought was
repellent, and, besides, she was not a good shot with a revolver.
Nor did the cactus offer any relief, since it was only just coming
into bloom, and as yet bore no fruit.

The sun had grown red and huge when at last in the hard-baked dirt
she discovered fresh hoof-prints. These seemed to lead along the
line in which she was traveling, and she followed them gladly,
encouraged when they were joined by others, for, although they
meandered aimlessly, they formed something more like a trail than
anything she had as yet seen. Guessing at their general direction,
she hurried on, coming finally into a region where the soil was
shallow and scarcely served to cover the rocky substratum. A low
bluff rose on her left, and along its crest scattered Spanish
daggers were raggedly silhouetted against the sky.

She was in a well-defined path now; she tried to run, but her legs
were heavy; she stumbled a great deal, and her breath made
strange, distressing sounds as it issued from her open lips.
Hounding the steep shoulder of the ridge, she hastened down a
declivity into a knot of scrub-oaks and ebony-trees, then halted,