Here she laid a
blanket for him and spread another on the top of the bushes, fastening
it to the tallest ones till it stretched, a sheltering canopy, over
him. She tried to cheer him with assurances that water would be found
at the next halting place. He was listless at first, seeming not to
listen, then the life in her voice roused his sluggish faculties, his
cheeks took color, and his dull glance lit on point after point in its
passage to her face, like the needle flickering toward the pole.
"If I could get water enough to drink, I'd be all right," he said.
"The pains are gone."
"They _must_ find it soon," she answered, lifting the weight of his
fallen courage, heavy as his body might have been to her arms. "This
is a traveled road. There _must_ be a spring somewhere along it."
And she continued prying up the despairing spirit till the man began to
respond, showing returning hope in the eagerness with which he hung on
her words. When he lay sinking into drowsy quiet, she stole away from
him to where the camp was spread about the unlit pyre of Daddy John's
sage brush. It was too early for supper, and the old man, with the
accouterments of the hunt slung upon his person and his rifle in his
hand, was about to go afield after jack rabbit.
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