Show 183 STUDENT LIFE plan to “move to a more comfortAfter what seemed able position a year lie thought about grasping a sage brush with his uninjured hand and nulling himself over lie wondered blankly why it had taken him so long to think of the plan when the brush was right before his eyes lie reached for it and missed it tried again and caught it It was difficult to make his hand close on it and when he pulled the pain became so much greater that he groaned aloud and stopped with the weight of his body still on the broken shoulder lie closed his eyes and called himself a baby weakly over and over for a long time Then the shoulder began to grow numb and throb awfuliy But his head began to grow clearer and the realization that it was growing clearer made him strangely happy in spite of his pain He laughed of a while his weakness feebly at ago and pulled himself over on his face It hurt him so that he began to forget again And he lay in this ixisition until the heat began to trouble him greatly and he became thirsty His canteen had been slung over his shoulder so he raised himself up on his arm to look for it He could see it through an opening in the brush at his right and he pulled himself towards it by grasping the brush and wiggling his body and lifeless legs but his progress was slow and the canteen seemed only to get farther away After many rests he reached it and with much difficulty got a long cool drink When he had finished he laid his hot head on it and the thought struck him for the first time that he was in a decidedly bad fix and that unless help came he would perhaps after a long time die there and that the chances that help would come were very slim If any one crossed the desert they might take fifty trails besides the one he had taken and even if they took the one he came on they would pass him without seeing him Still he could perhaps hear them and could call to them He wanted to make sure that he could call if anyone came so he rose up and made an effort to shout but it seemed to loosen the top of his aching skull and he laid his head on the canteen again He cursed fearfully at the heat It would burn him alive at noon Why didn’t comebody come? He was afraid his voice would fail when he needed it and he thought of signals of distress put up by shipwrecked sailors After manv tedious fail- ures he placed a red handkerchief in the top of a sagebrush growing at his head and moving his head and the canteen into the little spot of shade it made he rested again Then the flies began to come one at first then another then hundreds of them They came back into his face faster than he could brush them off soft spitefully clinging devilish and ate at the flesh where the skin had been torn off in the fall He fought with his uninjured arm until it would no He wondered why longer move the sun’s rays did not set the flies |