With the instinct of desert creatures the mules hurried their pace.
Pack-saddles creaked, spurs jingled. Life, insistent, thirsty life,
quickened the dead plain.
A man rode ahead. He dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows
flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been
fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking.
The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not
enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare
mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely what
he was looking for, and at last he saw it, a circle of flat stones, some
twenty feet across, the desert sign for a buried spring.
But there was something inside the circle, something which lay still.
The man put his horse to the gallop again. There was a canteen lying in
the trail, a canteen covered with a dirty plaid casing. The horse's hoof
struck it, and it gave out a dry, metallic sound.
"Poor devil!" muttered the rider.
He dismounted and turned the figure over.
"God!" he said. "And water under him all the time!"
Then he dragged the quiet figure outside the ring of stones, and getting
a spade from his saddle, fell to digging in the center. A foot below the
surface water began to appear, clear, cold water. He lay down, flat and
drank out of the pool.
Clayton Spencer was alone in his house. In the months since Natalie had
gone, he had not been there a great deal. He had been working very hard.
He had not been able to shoulder arms, but he had, nevertheless, fought
a good fight.
He was very tired. During the day, a sort of fierce energy upheld him.
Because in certain things he had failed he was the more determined to
succeed in others. Not for himself; ambition of that sort had died of
the higher desire to serve his country. But because the sense of failure
in his private life haunted him.
The house was very quiet. Buckham came in to mend the fire, issuing from
the shadows like a lean old ghost and eyeing him with tender, faded old
eyes.
"Is there anything else, sir?"
"Thanks, no. Buckham."
"Yes, Mr. Spencer."
"I have not spoken about it, but I think you have understood. Mrs.
Spencer is--not coming back."
"Yes, Mr. Spencer."
"I had meant to close the house, but certain things--Captain Spencer's
wife expects a child. I would rather like to have her come here, for the
birth. After that, if the war is over, I shall turn the house over to
them. You would stay on, I hope, Buckham."