When they reached it he was standing at the edge of a caverned
indentation. Dead grasses dropped against the walls, withered weeds
thickened toward the apex in a tangled carpet. There had once been
water there, but it was gone, dried, or sunk to some hidden channel in
the rock's heart. They stood staring at the scorched herbage and the
basin where the earth was cracked apart in its last gasping throes of
thirst.
David's voice broke the silence. He had climbed to the front seat, and
his face, gilded with the sunlight, looked like the face of a dead man
painted yellow.
"Is there water?" he said, then saw the dead grass and dried basin, and
met the blank looks of his companions.
Susan's laconic "The spring's dry," was not necessary. He fell forward
on the seat with a moan, his head propped in his hands, his fingers
buried in his hair. Courant sent a look of furious contempt over his
abject figure, then gave a laugh that fell on the silence bitter as a
curse. Daddy John without a word moved off and began unhitching the
mules. Even in Susan pity was, for the moment, choked by a swell of
disgust.
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