"This won't do at all," said Dewitt at last, wearily. "We had better try for any old mountain at all in the hope of finding water."
They stood panting, staring at the distant haze of a peak. Trackless and tortuous, the way underfoot was incredibly difficult. Yet the distances melted in ephemeral slopes as lovely in their tints as they were accursed in their reality of cruelty. Rhoda, unaccustomed to day travel, panted and gasped as they walked. But she held her own fairly well, while DeWitt, sick and overstrained at the start, was failing rapidly.
"It's noon now," said John a little thickly. "You had better lie in the shade of that rock for an hour."
"You sleep too!" pleaded Rhoda.
"I'm too hot to sleep. I'll wake you in an hour."
When Rhoda awoke it was to see DeWitt leaning against the rock heap, his lips swollen, his eyes uncertain.
Weak and dizzy herself, she rose and laid her hand on John's, every maternal instinct in her stirring and speaking in her gray eyes.
"Come, dear boy, we mustn't give up so easily."
John lifted the little hand to his cheek.
"I won't give up," he said uncertainly. "I'll take care of you, honey girl!"
"Come on, then!" said Rhoda. "You see that queer bunch of cholla yonder? Let's get as far as that before we stop again!"
With a great effort, DeWitt gathered himself together and, fixing his eyes on the fantastic cactus growth, he plodded desperately through the sand. At the cholla bunch, Rhoda pointed to a jutting lavender rock.
"At that we'll rest for a minute. Come on, John!"
John's sick eyes did not waver but his trembling legs described many circles in their journey to the jutting rock. Distances were so many times what they seemed that Rhoda's little scheme carried them over a mile of desert before DeWitt sank to his knees.
"I'm a sick man," he said huskily as he fell in a limp heap.
Nothing could have appeared more opportunely than this new hardship to take Rhoda's mind off her misery of the night. Nothing could have brought John so near to her as this utter helplessness brought about through his toiling for her. She looked at him with tears of pity in her eyes, while her heart sank with fright. She knew the terrible danger that menaced them. But she closed her lips firmly and looked thoughtfully at the mite of water that remained to them. Then she held the canteen to DeWitt's lips. He pushed it away from him and in another moment or so he rose.
Rhoda, fastening their hopes to another distant cholla, led the way on again. But she too was growing a little light-headed. The distant cactus danced grotesquely and black spots flitted between her and the molten iron over which, her fancy said they traveled. Suddenly she laughed crazily: "'Twas brillig, and the slythy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe!"