Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/166

152 drinks, even the fancied ripple of running water lured them on.

Every little while their knees would give way and the three of them would slump to the sand. Larkin and Stone would sit panting, looking straight forward until one would rise, on all fours first, and then the other, to take up their burden. Their swollen feet burned intolerably until they merged with their bodies into one great, blistering ache. Healy, in the irony of the situation, had lapsed into a coma that changed him to a pliable automaton, unconscious of pain or thirst or any sensation. The two carriers lost all thought of what he meant to them save that they were doomed to pick him up, to stagger on, fall, rest, scramble up, and reassume their burden.

Once they saw a mirage of tree-fringed waters and only stared at it apathetically, waiting for some strength to come back to them where they had collapsed until it suddenly dissolved.

It was noon when they saw the barrel cactus. What blessed freak of the soil had provided fertility for its bird-dropped seed meant nothing to them. It was the first they had seen, the first green thing since they had topped the mesa. Half blind, they had almost stumbled on its spiny column. Half an hour before they had used the last thimbleful of water, too little to drink, just enough to wipe the caking slime from the lips of the three of them.

To Larkin the cactus meant nothing but a mockery of the desert. Stone blinked at it, slowly gathering up force enough to crawl to it on all fours, to get out