Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/151

 but Zack wasn't there. He had departed thence. Even if that pair of camels had not been hobbled, they could never have caught old Zack in his first quarter of a mile. Not until his breath gave out and he sat down on a little ridge of sand.

"Huh!" he gasped. "What you reckin' dem things was?" Whatever they were, the two Big Gray Things, dropped down on the sand and Zack knew that he would never disturb them. The bucket had been abandoned long ago, and forgotten.

"Dis sho is one big ole sandbar," Zack observed, and began to squint around him. In fear of the hobbled camels, Zack had dodged, like a rabbit. The lone palm had vanished. Zack's guide-post was gone. True, there was another big tree to his left, but Zack knew he had not stampeded from that direction. He looked uneasily for some road or path. There was none. Zack would have been in the middle of a bad fix if he hadn't glimpsed a light. A light is real—it gives something to travel by; a fellow knows he's going to somebody. Folks make lights. So Zack rose up and started towards this one, which he suppose to be the plantation house.

"Huh!" he grinned, "nobody can't git me lost—leastways not in open groun' like dis. I knowed de big house wuz dis way—knowed it all de time."

As he traveled, Zack kept his eye skinned for