Hare rode on into the night, tumbled from his saddle in the gray of dawn to sleep, and stumbled in the twilight to his drooping horse.  His eyes were blind now to the desert shapes, his brain burned and his tongue filled his mouth.  Silvermane trod ever upon Wolf’s heels; he had come into the kingdom of his desert-strength; he lifted his drooping head and lengthened his stride; weariness had gone and he snorted his welcome to something on the wind.  Then he passed the limping dog and led the way.

Hare held to the pommel and bent dizzily forward in the saddle.  Silvermane was going down, step by step, with metallic clicks upon flinty rock.  Whether he went down or up was all the same to Hare; he held on with closed eyes and whispered to himself.  Down and down, step by step, cracking the stones with iron-shod hoofs, the gray stallion worked his perilous way, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep.  Then he stopped with a great slow heave and bent his head.

The black bulge of a canyon rim blurred in Hare’s hot eyes.  A trickling sound penetrated his tired brain.  His ears had grown like his eyes—­ false.  Only another delusion!  As he had been tortured with the sight of lake and stream now he was to be tortured with the sound of running water.  Yet he listened, for it was sweet even in its mockery.  What a clear musical tinkle, like silver bells tossing on the wind!  He listened.  Soft murmuring flow, babble and gurgle, little hollow fall and splash!

Suddenly Silvermane, lifting his head, broke the silence of the canyon with a great sigh of content.  It pierced the dull fantasy of Hare’s mind; it burst the gloomy spell.  The sigh and the snort which followed were Silvermane’s triumphant signals when he had drunk his fill.

Hare fell from the saddle.  The gray dog lay stretched low in the darkness.  Hare crawled beside him and reached out with his hot hands.  Smooth cool marble rock, growing slippery, then wet, led into running water.  He slid forward on his face and wonderful cold thrills quivered over his burning skin.  He drank and drank until he could drink no more.  Then he lay back upon the rock; the madness of his brain went out with the light of the stars, and he slept.

When he awoke red canyon walls leaned far above him to a gap spanned by blue sky.  A song of rushing water murmured near his ears.  He looked down; a spring gushed from a crack in the wall; Silvermane cropped green bushes, and Wolf sat on his haunches waiting, but no longer with sad eyes and strange mien.  Hare raised himself, looking again and again, and slowly gathered his wits.  The crimson blur had gone from his eyes and the burning from his skin, and the painful swelling from his tongue.

He drank long and deeply, and rising with clearing thoughts and thankful heart, he kissed Wolf’s white head, and laid his arms round Silvermane’s neck.  He fed them, and ate himself, not without difficulty, for his lips were puffed and his tongue felt like a piece of rope.  When he had eaten, his strength came back.