Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/158

144 "To 'ell with 'em," he said, thickly. "You carnt tell me there's other suckers enough to trail that country. It took gold to drag me hover it and I'd give hall my share of old Lyman's find to be hout of this."

As for Healy, he saw nothing. He was the best off of all of them. The fever of his wound had brought on a semi-delirium in which he gained a false strength and walked on, seemingly unconscious of the pain in his arm, of thirst, of the heat, of the threat that he had made that they would have to take care of him. It could not last long but, for the time, he set the pace with them, muttering, occasionally laughing.

Mid-afternoon saw all of them silent. In the hearts of Stone, Harvey, and Larkin, a mutual admiration of each other's endurance was strengthening, with deepening individual resolves to stay with the game. Harvey was desert-salted but he was handicapped by his years. They hung on desperately to the few morsels of food and husbanded the water until the joggling of it in their canteens became an exasperation. Slowly their tissues burned away until it seemed that their flesh gradually vanished with their energy, as sand might run out of a leaky sack. The fuel in their stomachs had served to the limit of its capacity and they travelled on fast-diminishing reserves. Their mouths seemed lined with dry cork, their tongues swelled until they began to protrude between lips blackened, blistered, bloody. All spring had gone from their walk, all flexion from their joints, and they shuffled on in single file, scuffling the loose