Hours passed and it seemed that he must have gone further than a man with a boy could have walked in a day. The sun was high overhead. It must be well past midday. He was standing on a little dune when he caught a glimpse of a dark object some distance away. By planting his feet one straight before the other he was able to make directly toward what he had seen. It took a long time. Then he was upon it--a man, Bragdon, lying face down, and beside him a smaller shape. Steven turned Bragdon over; he was dead. Whether he had been killed by violence or not Steven did not stop to see, nor note whether he had been scalped before or after death. He tore at the red-and-black serape which covered the smaller shape, uncovering Doren, who lay limp and pale. But the boy was sleeping. He slept, and the traces of tears coursed grimily down the thin childish cheeks. Steven was dizzy. The whole gruesome world seemed unreal. He raised a tiny tepee over the sleeping boy, with the blanket and a stick he had carried with him into the desert. Then with his hands he scooped a shallow grave for Bragdon and buried him where he lay. He lifted Doren in his arms, but remembered to give the child a drink lest he should perish of thirst. He opened his gourd, took a drink of the tepid water himself, and slowly poured a generous amount down Doren’s throat. The boy gulped and swallowed automatically without opening his eyes. Steven made, by instinct, toward the spot where he had ascended the sands; that would be the nearest point at which to leave them, surely. He found a few footsteps here and there, but they brought him no nearer the edge of the white desert. Everywhere it seemed to turn up its rim toward the sky and he would turn back baffled and try a bit further along. Some instinct within told him that just beyond were water, shade, rest, where he could lay the burden to which he clung. The gourd slipped unnoticed from his back as he plodded on. Long after all conscious reason had left him, instinct persisted through the delirium of heat and thirst, and he kept on and on, trying to reach the crest beyond which lay a lower, more friendly desert. He fell often to his knees, rested a moment, rose, tumbled again, and so often as he fell staggered up once more. Again and again he turned back from the very edge of the drift, blinded, and then retraced his steps. But everywhere he turned a white curtain seemed to hang before him, and in its misty film he saw Consuelo’s face as she had looked up at him that night, so whitely in the moonlight of her garden. * * * * *