“Happen to have a drink about you, partner?” he called.

The man stopped his horse and grinned.

“Pretty early in the morning for a drink, isn’t it?” he inquired.  Then he saw Dick’s eyes, and reached reluctantly into his saddle bag.  “I’ve got a quart here,” he said.  “I’ve traveled forty miles and spent nine dollars to get it, but I guess you need some.”

“You wouldn’t care to sell it, I suppose?”

“The bottle?  Not on your life.”

He untied a tin cup from his saddle and carefully poured a fair amount into it, steadying the horse the while.

“Here,” he said, and passed it over.  “But you’d better cut it out after this.  It’s bad medicine.  You’ve got two good drinks there.  Be careful.”

Dick took the cup and looked at the liquor.  The odor assailed him, and for a queer moment he felt a sudden distaste for it.  He had a revulsion that almost shook him.  But he drank it down and passed the cup back.

“You’ve traveled a long way for it,” he said, “and I needed it, I guess.  If you’ll let me pay for it—­”

“Forget it,” said the man amiably, and started his horse.  “But better cut it out, first chance you get.  It’s bad medicine.”

He rode on after his vanishing pack, and Dick took up the trail again.  But before long he began to feel sick and dizzy.  The aftertaste of the liquor in his mouth nauseated him.  The craving had been mental habit, not physical need, and his body fought the poison rebelliously.  After a time the sickness passed, and he slept in the saddle.  He roused once, enough to know that the horse had left the trail and was grazing in a green meadow.  Still overcome with his first real sleep he tumbled out of the saddle and stretched himself out on the ground.  He slept all day, lying out in the burning sun, his face upturned to the sky.

When he wakened it was twilight, and the horse had disappeared.  His face burned from the sun, and his head ached violently.  He was weak, too, from hunger, and the morning’s dizziness persisted.  Connected thought was impossible, beyond the fact that if he did not get out soon, he would be too weak to travel.  Exhausted and on the verge of sunstroke, he set out on foot to find the trail.

He traveled all night, and the dawn found him still moving, a mere automaton of a man, haggard and shambling, no longer willing his progress, but somehow incredibly advancing.  He found water and drank it, fell, got up, and still, right foot, left foot, he went on.  Some time during that advance he had found a trail, and he kept to it automatically.  He felt no surprise and no relief when he saw a cabin in a clearing and a woman in the doorway, watching him with curious eyes.  He pulled himself together and made a final effort, but without much interest in the result.

“I wonder if you could give me some food?” he said.  “I have lost my horse and I’ve been wandering all night.”