There was a low meadow now, covered with pale green grass.
Quail scurried away under the mesquite bushes, stealthily whistling,
and here and there the two stones still marked the way.
With the instinct of desert creatures the mules hurried their pace.
Pack-saddles creaked, spurs jingled. Life, insistent, thirsty life,
quickened the dead plain.
A man rode ahead. He dug his spurs into his horse and cantered,
elbows flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours
he had been fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his
lips cracking. The trail continued to be marked with its double
stones, but it did not enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and
skirted the base of the bare mountain slope. The man's eyes
sharpened. He knew very definitely what he was looking for, and
at last he saw it, a circle of flat stones, some twenty feet across,
the desert sign for a buried spring.
But there was something inside the circle, something which lay still.
The man put his horse to the gallop again.
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