forward, winding in and out among the shifting dunes, with only the wind
to guide them. It was an awful trail, the hoofs sinking deep in drifting
sand, the struggling ponies becoming so exhausted that their riders
finally dismounted, and staggered forward on foot, leading them stumbling
blindly after. Once the negro's horse dropped, and had to be lashed to its
feet again; once Keith's pony stumbled and fell on him, hurling him face
down into the sand, and he would have died there, lacking sufficient
strength to lift the dead weight, but for Neb's assistance. As it was he
went staggering blindly forward, bruised, and faint from hunger and
fatigue. Neither man spoke; they had no breath nor energy left to waste;
every ounce of strength needed to be conserved for the battle against
nature. They were fighting for life; fighting grimly, almost hopelessly,
and alone.

About them night finally closed in, black and starless, yet fortunately
with a gradual dying away of the storm. For an hour past they had been
struggling on, doubting their direction, wondering dully if they were not
lost and merely drifting about in a circle. They had debated this fiercely
once, the ponies standing dejectedly, tails to the storm, Neb arguing that
the wind still blew from the south, and Keith contending it had shifted
into the westward. The white man won his way, and they staggered on
uncertain, the negro grasping the first pony's tail to keep from being
separated from his companion. Some instinct of the plains must have guided
them, for at last they dragged themselves out from the desert, the
crunching sand under foot changing into rock, and then to short brittle
grass, at which the ponies nibbled eagerly. The slope led gradually
downward, the animals scenting water, and struggling to break away.
Swaying in their saddles, the riders let them go, and they never stopped
until belly deep in the stream, their noses buried. The men shivered in
their saddles, until, at last satisfied, the ponies consented to be forced