Guadalupe’s footprints--the trail he had followed and lost the day before! So Stooder thought. A great sense of security pushed through the daze in his brain. Here, at last, lay the way to salvation. That thought having been duly relished, he turned his attention once more to the mysterious vegetable whip by his side. He never had seen its like. How it came to be there he had no notion. The thing was unlike any desert growth in his experienced observation, wherefore it seemed to represent some prodigy of the desert god dropped by him for a purpose. He gripped the heavier end of the root between his hands and gave it a twist. The thing broke like an over-ripe radish and a thin spurt of water shot from the severed ends. Greedily he thrust one stump into his mouth and clamped his jaws upon it. Gracious fluid, mildly acrid, drenched the parchment-like membranes of his throat. The Doc sighed once, then wolfed the whole stub of the root he had broken off. As the pulp was swallowed he felt immediate access of strength and sanity. From somewhere deep in the corroded heart of him welled an emotion whose like he had not known during all the years of his warped and weathered manhood. As if a child prompted him the gaunt, half-naked creature on the sands lifted his eyes to the glowing blue. “Thanks, dear God!” So the sardonic genius of the waste places permitted the cloak of divinity to fall upon Ygnacio, fugitive and murderer, for that a surprising charity had prompted him to pause in the night by a raving man, divide with him his slender store of insurance against death, then pass on. The root-of-the-sands which Stooder half devoured quickly restored him to something like the normal. Gone were the deliriums that had dogged him those hours of horror. He heard no longer the ghost bells of the Lost Mission summoning him to treasure buried in the bleak mountains yonder. Rational thought was his after all the wanderings in Bedlam. He mapped his strategy against the ever-present menace of the desert. Here were Guadalupe’s tracks--the Papago hound; wait till he could get hands on the devil! Of course they would lead to the village of the Sand People on the edge of El Infiernillo. Well and good; but that might still be a long way ahead. Could he make it just on what was left of this mysterious root? About one chance in ten; and the old Doc wasn’t taking any more chances. What then? Why, follow the tracks back to the stalled auto. Water might be there. Surely were cans of tomatoes--about a dozen of ’em. A dozen tomato cans would carry him a hundred miles on foot; he knew because he’d drunk uncooked canned tomatoes many a time--food and drink in small compass. All right; follow the tracks back to the auto, rest up a bit and then get a fresh start back over those same tracks and straight into the Sand People’s rancheria.