Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/175

Rh dot soared, a buzzard, volplaning down from its aerial watching place to the feast.

"We can fill the canteen at the spring," said Red. "After we wash it out good. I wouldn't drink what was left after that Greaser if I was thirstin' to death. An' we can use the flask. We'll likely go shy of water before we git through."

He pulled out the cork and smelled the contents.

"Faugh!" he exclaimed as he spilled them on the ground. "Smells like benzine. Vasquez' booze. I'll cache my saddle before we go on."

Sheridan watched him wrap saddle and bridle with their blanket and cover them with sand. They were going on, afoot, twenty-five miles of ever increasing desert ahead. If they got to the Painted Rocks by midnight they would be doing well. And how were they to find the girl and Hollister by night? How would they find her? "Get her before it is dark," Juanita, discarded mistress of Hollister, had warned. All the way that they would go the sun would be sinking ahead of them, marking off the day.

As Jackson straightened up Sheridan placed his reins behind his saddle horn. He turned the mare and slapped her on the flanks, bidding her go home.

"Go home, Goldie, poor old girl," he said. "Go home."

She went a little way, uncertainly, then stopped and whinnied. He urged her on and she started, limping. But, when the two men turned to trudge on to their distant goal, the mare wheeled and