Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/105

Rh those she loved, she wandered out over the star-lit plain. All night she tramped through the sagebrush with never a pause for rest or sleep, and when the red sun swung out of the earth, she tramped on and on. The sun poured its pitiless rays upon her wounded head, her soiled mantle trailed upon the dewy earth, her tired feet were torn and bleeding, and yet to all these ills she gave no thought. Vaguely now she remembered that she had a fixed purpose, a certain duty to perform, and that was to be the end of all. She must not lose sight of the river; but even now when she looked for it, the river was not to be seen. Her lips were parched, her throat seemed to be burning. The wide waste o'er which she wandered lay quivering in the white glare of the noonday sun. Away at the outer edge of this shipless sea, the gray air trembled; her brain whirled, she swooned and fell to the earth.

"The cool night wind was about her when she came to herself again, but she could remember but dimly the events of the past; and so, half-dazed, she wandered on. Late in the afternoon she came to a little station where