The sun had grown red and huge when at last in the hard-baked dirt she discovered fresh hoof-prints.  These seemed to lead along the line in which she was traveling, and she followed them gladly, encouraged when they were joined by others, for, although they meandered aimlessly, they formed something more like a trail than anything she had as yet seen.  Guessing at their general direction, she hurried on, coming finally into a region where the soil was shallow and scarcely served to cover the rocky substratum.  A low bluff rose on her left, and along its crest scattered Spanish daggers were raggedly silhouetted against the sky.

She was in a well-defined path now; she tried to run, but her legs were heavy; she stumbled a great deal, and her breath made strange, distressing sounds as it issued from her open lips.  Hounding the steep shoulder of the ridge, she hastened down a declivity into a knot of scrub-oaks and ebony-trees, then halted, staring ahead of her.

The nakedness of the stony arroyo, the gnarled and stunted thickets, were softened by the magic of twilight; the air had suddenly cooled; overhead the empty, flawless sky was deepening swiftly from blue to purple; the chaparral had awakened and echoed now to the sounds of life.  Nestling in a shallow, flinty bowl was a pool of water, and on its brink a little fire was burning.

It was a tiny fire, overhung with a blackened pot; the odor of greasewood and mesquite smoke was sharp.  A man, rising swiftly to his feet at the first sound, was staring at the new-comer; he was as alert as any wild thing.  But the woman scarcely heeded him.  She staggered directly toward the pond, seeing nothing after the first glance except the water.  She would have flung herself full length upon the edge, but the man stepped forward and stayed her, then placed a tin cup in her hand.  She mumbled something in answer to his greeting and the hoarse, raven-like croak in her voice startled her; then she drank, with trembling eagerness, drenching the front of her dress.  The water was warm, but it was clean and delicious.

“Easy now.  Take your time,” said the man, as he refilled the cup.  “It won’t give out.”

She knelt and wet her face and neck; the sensation was so grateful that she was tempted to fling herself bodily into the pool.  The man was still talking, but she took no heed of what he said.  Then at last she sank back, her feet curled under her, her body sagging, her head drooping.  She felt the stranger’s hands beneath her arms, felt herself lifted to a more comfortable position.  Without asking permission, the stranger unlaced first one, then the other of her dusty boots, seeming not to notice her weak attempt at resistance.  Once he had placed her bare feet in the water, she forgot her resentment in the intense relief.

The man left her seated in a collapsed, semi-conscious state, and went back to his fire.  For the time she was too tired to do more than refill the drinking-cup occasionally, or to wet her face and arms, but as her pores drank greedily her exhaustion lessened and her vitality returned.