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Show SBESEMT EOSES feROLLIN BROWN H&ft one swallow of water! Countlesi times, over and over, he had Imagined Imag-ined it He would take the water drop by drop; hold It on his tongue, feel It on his palate; drop by. drop it would drip down the leather-cracked leather-cracked throat. Or would he take the swallow with one lustful, trembling, trem-bling, satisfying gulp? A thousand thou-sand times he had imagined it, while the force of an iron will drove his unsteady body on. The fall had come within five yards of the mark he had set for himself, the spot where he would finally sink down, rest and drink. Driven muscles had weakened with the joy of anticipation and the eagerness. He was cheated now beyond be-yond any human measure. He knew only despair. But his warped mind was no longer concerned with the despair of death; only with the measure meas-ure of his loss that pitiful quantity of stale water that was gonel He cracked. He would gladly have traded his life for just one drink of water. He sobbed futilely, hoarsely, gaspingly. Deputy sheriff Jim Doan Is called In by sheriff Sam Fuck to track down a fine o train robbers. The sheriff tells Jim that hs believes ths gang Is led by a girl, ths daughter of Plo Alvaro, a former for-mer rancher. Star La Roe, a cattleman who has bought Alvaro's ranch, reports to the sheriff that ruitlen have stolen more than balf his herd. He accuses the Alvaro girl. Sheriff Flick arranged tor a special train to take Jim to the point In ths desert in San Loroto county where the holdup took place. Jim knows Miss Alvaro, and doubts that she Is ths leader, or even a member of the gang. Hs trails ths robbers by the hoofprlnts until bis horse dies. Then he begins walking. Heat and thirst plague him. J CHAPTER II I "Uh-huh," agreed Flick; "that's It. Thafi sort o' my gen'rl Idea, nyhow. Just keep it In mind. But one thing I'm stakin' my hat on, Doane. This train job was hatched from Inside the Sand Wells country, not outside. I'm bettin' you'll be able to pick up a nice fresh trail of shod hoofs within half a mile of where them four fellers left the train. That trail will then hit for the nastiest, toughest-ridin' ipotg which. Is to be found In that nd o' the county. An' that's sayln' iomethin'. See If I'm right." And sheriff Sam Flick was Indisputably Indis-putably right. But Doane's trouble had not come from rough country, or a hard ride. He went through that like a bullet goes through paper. As the sheriff had prophesied, there was a fresh hoof trail within a few hundred yards of where the train had topped. One of the band had evidently evi-dently managed the horses. The trail turned straight north Into the desert country, avoiding what scant habitation existed in the neighborhood neighbor-hood of Sand Wells Junction. Doane followed fast and light, with the quart canteen of water and a pocketful of dried jerky for food. He intended to hit the fresh trail for perhaps a day, to make certain of its general description, unless there was a luckier break. If the trail continued northward, or turned into the foothills of the Sierra Nueva, as he suspected, a man hunt might be outfitted with greater swiftness and ease from the sheriff's office In Ean Loreto, with riders coming down on the scene rather than working Up from Sand Wells. Hours later he noticed that the animal had begun to limp. Glancing Glanc-ing down, he saw that the right foreleg was badly swollen; he slid out of his saddle and looked at the leg. Snake bitel That's why the horse had flinched; a rattler had struck him and Doane hadn't even known itl Maybe the rattler had lost his rattles. Anyway, there It was. He cut the swelling and applied a tourniquet. : He'd made a bad mistake in riding rid-ing the animal so long; he'd given the poison a good start. But he told himself It wasn't serious; rattler's rat-tler's bite doesn't often kill stock. ' But the animal's foreleg continued contin-ued to swell, with a rapidity that hurled Doane into a momentary panic. An hour later he took mercy on the beast and shot it He looked to his canteen. Less than a pint of water left! He made some calculations. calcu-lations. He would go on to the waterhole, rest there through part of the night, drink until his system was saturated with moisture, then head back for Sand Wells with a brimming canteen to see him through. It was the only sensible thing to do. The riders he followed bad also been making track for the waterhole, and that lured him on, to see what general course they would take In leaving. The waterhole proved to be farther far-ther than five miles . . . twice that. But the outlaw trail didn't trouble to turn Into it. The waterhole was dry. A big shot of dynamite had been exploded In It, cracking the lower structure. And in Doane's canteen were just two man-sized drinks; his throat was already parched. "Dry!" It was a cry from cracked, fe-' vered lips. The hour was sunset. Twenty-four hours after he had discovered dis-covered a waterhole that was only so much hard-baked mud,- Doane dropped to his knee In the sunset light and held his tongue against the canteen cover of burlap. There was no saliva on his tongue, but on the covering of that canteen was a circle cir-cle of moisture three or four Inches wide. The circle was a deep, caved dent in the side of the canteen. Doane had fallen. When he pulled the canteen from under him the damage was done. The fall had dented the metal side of the canteen can-teen and a soldered seam had cracked. Not a drop left inside. He sobbed thickly. For hours his throat had cried Just to taste the stuff, just for him to let a drop or two between thick, swollen Hps, just for a drop of water in that burning, choking throat of his. For seeming hours he had been able to think only of that, to imagine only the utter ec- stasy of the touch of moisture. He had goaded himself on with the ihought. He had lured himself on ftep by step with the promise. At sunset that iron will of his had promised the weakened, tortured body that there would be rest and The canteen lay on the ground before be-fore them, half tilted against a rock. It had a dented, caved side. There were other things to be seen In the dust. A man's body had laid there. Struggled. The marks where the man had tried to get to his feet and again lay still There were the marks of his raw knees. And to the south went the wavering track where he had disappeared. "What do you think?" "I think" a lean, straight old vaquero smiled "that a certain man who never fails has failed. According Ac-cording to what I heard, he left Sand Wells three mornings ago, alone. Here is the way he returns!" "How old Is the track?" "Ten hours twelve. But It is still a long way from here to Sand Wells. This man was already weak. He had no water. So! I think he must have discovered how the Senor La Rue put dynamite In the north water-hole, water-hole, to check cattle from disappearing disap-pearing In that direction." A single rider reined his mount away, moving slowly along the trail of uneven footprints. He rode a hundred yards, halted and returned re-turned to the group. He nodded his head In agreement with the spokesman. spokes-man. The saddlemen had dark, vigilant eyes. Even now one scanned the horizons, straight In the saddle with a certain tenseness In the poise. The man who read the scant sign of the footprints so Intuitively was known as Pedro Salvador; but his stolid-appearing stolid-appearing features showed a heritage heri-tage that was more Indian than Mexican. His age was indeterminable, indetermin-able, except that there was gray In the coarse, straight hair that showed under the dusty brim of his sombrero. Two others were middle-aged middle-aged men, the fourth a youth. The fifth rider, at a distance of fifty yards, would have been taken for a man, her sex unrecognizable under the garb she wore.' She was young, and clothed like the men in worn chaps, boots, a man's faded fad-ed shirt, and a wide-brimmed Stetson. Stet-son. Her fine, black hair was cut in a bob that was shorter than Pedro Salvador's grayed locks. But at closer distance the delicate mold of her profile, or the curve of her hps, the throat, the fine dark eyes spoke for themselves. Nearby, the working clothes of the hard-bitten cowman served only to accentuate the feminine daintiness by harsh contrast "Pedro!" she called. "The cool of the night will have kept this man alive. His track will wander. But he won't be dead this morning." "But soon!" corrected Pedro. "La Rue would be equally behind his coming here. Let them look after themselves, bury their own dead!" The girl seemed to consider this for a long while. "I suppose," she admitted. "But we'll have to find him." . The tall vaquero expressed his amazement. "With a railroad posse now riding out of Sand Wells? With every sheriff and deputy and down-country settler sitting on the ridges, watching with glasses? We do this for the enemy, so he won't fall next time?" "Yes," said the girL "We've got to. Spread out! The track will circle cir-cle after a while." m Experienced In desert ways, the riders separated. At the end of an hour they trailed down a man who looked scarcely human. His mad, burning eyes were fixed on the far peaks. He crawled inch by inch forward across the vast floor of the morning-hot desert on bare hands and knees. He babbled to himself In swollen-lipped words. There was nothing sane in his eyes or In his mind, but within him there was still that mighty, fundamental spirit of the man and this it was that had kept him fighting on. Jim Doane, deputy sheriff, opened sane eyes for the first time some three days later. He looked with amazement at the room In which he lay, at the ceiling over his head. In his mind roared the fragments of a thousand fantastic dreams. Water water water! Each of those dreams devolved upon water In one form or another. There were deep pools fringed with lush meadow mead-ow grass and tules; there were broad, brimming rivers; there were mountains, like the high country of the Sierra Nueva, where little creeks laughed and brawled down countless walled canyons and ravines. ra-vines. There were cold blue lakes, walled in with snow and ice. There were also gigantic, ghastly, red infernos, and landscapes of smoking hot rock; but even in these there had been water only Doane could never quite reach it. He was a man who had fought all the tortures of hell, and lived through by a mirae'e. He lay back on his bed for a long while now, looking at the ceiling and the walls. Then terror caught at him again. This was another false dream! He raised himself on his elbow, on the point of screaming: "Waters' Water! For God's sake ; . . water!" ' ' ' 1 He rembled In every muscle. Cold fear-sweat broke out on him. Curiously, he felt of the sheet spread over his body, felt of the bed frame. The fear hung on. Then a door opened. (TO BE CONTINUED) He would have gladly traded his life for just one drink of water. The vivid, desert sunset faded. Night spread shadow over a ghost-land ghost-land of barren, grotesque forms; weird buttes and rock heaps, fantastic fantas-tic ridges and gullies and it spread darkness over a man who lay in the dust where he had fallen, his lips pressed against the dry covering of a canteen. The heat of the day was suddenly gone and it was chill. . . . A shivering body brought Doane tt consciousness. For a time his brain was clear again. He coolly measured his chances. Fifteen or eighteen miles now would see him to Sand Wells. He told himself that he could make it. It was possible. He had to make it! Steeled in mind, he got to his feet. He carefully fixed his direction from the stars. Step by step, he began to move on. He walked a long way now before he tripped and fell. He pushed up and went on. . . . This was repeated countless times. His hands and knees were bloody. His clothing was ripped to shreds on the knees and legs. Finally Final-ly an unknown, far-away voice seemingly began to call to him: "You can't do it! No man could do it! Give up! Once you give up, death comes more easily!" Doane fought that voice. He cursed and screamed at it But no articulate sound actually came from those hard-swollen lips of his. There were long periods of time when he did forget There were times when visions gave him water, a world filled with water, cool and sweet; and he bathed lustfully in it drank to his fill of it. Other times when he nakedly fought the fires of hell and died a hundred deaths by torture. There were long periods of time when he lay quietly where he fell. Times when he slept. But always he staggered on. Shortly after dawn his delirium-fevered delirium-fevered mind cleared again for a few seconds. And this disclosed the grimmest joke of all. The coming sun rose in the wrong quarter of the compass. He was moving in the wrong direction! He had turned, wandering, back-tracked himself Sunrise threw those curiously floating, far peaks of the Sierra Nueva Into view. They had not changed. No farther away; no closer. Cool, distant, magical. A grotesque caricature of a man threw up one hand toward the mountains moun-tains which a crazed mind still somehow knew to be real. A smile that couldn't move the stiff, swollen lips lighted in the bloodshot eyes. He could hear again the laugh and gurgle of water In the granite , creek-beds. The music of it. He could see the sparkling, clear, sweet streams of water in the canyons and ravines. On his hands and knees Doane crept forward, toward the ranges that lay distant two days' march, for a strong man with food and water. "Aqui 'sta! Por Dios, some man is lost afoot! There Is his canteen!" can-teen!" Five hard-ridden mounts and a pack animal that carried water tins came to rein In a compact group. |