Part 41 (2/2)
”Try to sleep,” she said. ”We must stand it the best way we can.”
”I can't sleep.”
He moaned and turned over on his face and lying thus rolled from side to side as if in anguish that movement a.s.suaged. For the first time she looked at him, turning upon him a glance of questioning anxiety.
She could see his narrow, angular shape, the legs twisted, the arms bent for a pillow, upon which his head moved in restless pain.
”David, we've got to wait.”
”The night through? Stay this way till morning? I'll be dead. I wish I was now.”
She looked away from him seized by temptation that rose from contrition not pity.
”If you cared for me you could get it. Low's certain to find a spring.”
”Very well. I will,” she said and rose to her feet.
She moved softly to the camp the darkness hiding her. Daddy John was taking a cat nap by the fire, a barrier of garnered sage behind him.
She knew his sleep was light and stole with a tiptoe tread to the back of the wagon where the water cask stood. She drew off a cupful, then, her eye alert on the old man, crept back to David. When he saw her coming he sat up with a sharp breath of satisfaction, and she knelt beside him and held the cup to his lips. He drained it and sank back in a collapse of relief, muttering thanks that she hushed, fearful of the old man. Then she again took her seat beside him. She saw Daddy John get up and pile the fire high, and watched its leaping flame throw out tongues toward the stars.
Midnight was past when David woke and again begged for water. This time she went for it without urging. When he had settled into rest she continued her watch peaceful at the thought that she had given him what was hers and Courant's. Reparation of a sort had been made. Her mind could fly without hindrance into the wilderness with the lonely horseman. It was a luxury like dearly bought freedom, and she sat on lost in it, abandoned to a reverie as deep and solemn as the night.
CHAPTER IV
She woke when the sun shot its first rays into her eyes. David lay near by, breathing lightly, his face like a pale carven mask against the blanket's folds. Down below in the camp the fire burned low, its flame looking ineffectual and tawdry in the flushed splendor of the sunrise. Daddy John was astir, moving about among the animals and pausing to rub Julia's nose and hearten her up with hopeful words.
Susan mounted to a ledge and scanned the distance. Her figure caught the old man's eye and he hailed her for news. Nothing yet, she signaled back, then far on the plain's rose-brown limit saw a dust blur and gave a cry that brought him running and carried him in nimble ascent to her side. His old eyes could see nothing. She had to point the direction with a finger that shook.
”There, there. It's moving--far away, as if a drop of water had been spilled on a picture and made a tiny blot.”
They watched till a horseman grew from the nebulous spot. Then they climbed down and ran to the camp, got out the breakfast things and threw brush on the fire, speaking nothing but the essential word, for hope and fear racked them. When he was within hail Daddy John ran to meet him, but she stayed where she was, her hands making useless darts among the pans, moistening her lips that they might frame speech easily when he came. With down-bent head she heard his voice hoa.r.s.e from a dust-dried throat: he had found the trail and near it a spring, the cask he carried was full, it would last them for twelve hours. But the way was heavy and the animals were too spent for a day's march in such heat. They would not start till evening and would journey through the night.
She heard his feet brus.h.i.+ng toward her through the sage, and smelled the dust and sweat upon him as he drew up beside her. She was forced to raise her eyes and murmur a greeting. It was short and cold, and Daddy John marveled at the ways of women, who welcomed a man from such labors as if he had been to the creek and brought up a pail of water.
His face, gaunt and grooved with lines, made her heart swell with the pity she had so freely given David, and the pa.s.sion that had never been his. There was no maternal softness in her now. The man beside her was no helpless creature claiming her aid, but a conqueror upon whom she leaned and in whom she gloried.
After he had eaten he drew a saddle back into the rock's shade, spread a blanket and threw himself on it. Almost before he had composed his body in comfort he was asleep, one arm thrown over his head, his sinewy neck outstretched, his chest rising and falling in even breaths.
At noon Daddy John in broaching the cask discovered the deficit in the water supply. She came upon the old man with the half-filled coffee-pot in his hand staring down at its contents with a puzzled face. She stood watching him, guilty as a thievish child, the color mounting to her forehead. He looked up and in his eyes she read the shock of his suspicions. Delicacy kept him silent, and as he rinsed the water round in the pot his own face reddened in a blush for the girl he had thought strong in honor and self-denial as he was.
”I took it,” she said slowly.
He had to make allowances, not only to her, but to himself. He felt that he must rea.s.sure her, keep her from feeling shame for the first underhand act he had ever known her commit. So he spoke with all the cheeriness he could command:
”I guess you needed it pretty bad. Turning out as it has I'm glad you done it.”
She saw he thought she had taken it for herself, and experienced relief in the consciousness of unjust punishment.
<script>