Page:Knaves of Diamonds.pdf/129

 been assimilated into the system of a starving lion, his horse had died of the "big head" sickness before that, one of his mules had strayed, and by this time no doubt its bones were picked clean. Two others had taken the sickness, and had died the same night. The waggon stood abandoned five or six days' journey back, and here he was, with the strongest and wiriest of his animals, worn to a skeleton like himself, and half mad with thirst, within scent of water, it was true, but within sight of nothing but the bare, baked wildernesses around, and the blazing white-hot heavens above.

Hour after hour passed in dumb, hopeless struggling, and blind, half-conscious suffering, and still man and beast staggered on, and the wheeling vultures came lower and closer.

At last, about the middle of the afternoon, the mule stopped, and a sort of shudder ran through her body. Tom stumbled, and