Twelve hours later Greenfield's horse gave out. Frawley uttered a cry of joy, but the handicap of half a day was a serious one; he was exhausted, famished, and in the bag there remained only sufficient water to moisten his lips. The fifth day broke with an angry sun and no sign on the horizon to relieve the eternal monotony. Only the buzzard at the same distance aloft bided his time. Hunter and hunted, united perforce by their common suffering, plodded on with the weary, hopeless straining of human beings harnessed to a plow, covering scarcely a mile an hour. From time to time, by common consent, they sat down, gaunt, exhausted figures, eyeing each other with the instinct of beasts, their elbows on their bony knees. Whether from a fear of losing energy, whether under the spell of the frightful stillness, neither had uttered a word. Frawley was afire with thirst. The desert entered his body with its dry mortal heat, and ran its consuming dryness through his veins; his eyes started from his face as the sun above him hung out of the parched sky. He began to talk to himself, to sing. Under his feet the sand sifted like the soft protest of autumn leaves. He imagined himself back in the forest, marking the rustle of leafy branches and the intermittent dropping of acorns and twigs. All at once his legs refused to move. He stood still, his gaze concentrated on the figure of Greenfield a long moment, then his body crumpled under him and he sank without volition to the ground. Greenfield stopped, sat down, and waited. After half an hour he drew himself to his feet, moved on, then stopped, returned, approached, and listened to the crooning of the delirious man. Suddenly satisfied, he flung both arms into the air in frenzied triumph, turned, staggered, and reeled away, while back over the desert came the grotesque, hideous refrain, in maddened victory: "Yankee Doodle Dandy oh! Yankee Doodle Dandy!" Frawley watched him go, then with a sigh of relief turned his glance to the black revolving form in the air--at least that remained to break the horror of the solitude. Then he lost consciousness. The beat of wings across his face aroused him with a start and a cry of agony. The great bird of carrion, startled in its inspection, flew clumsily off and settled fearlessly on the ground, blinking at him. An immense revolt, a furious anger brought with it new strength. He rose and rushed at the bird with clenched fist, cursing it as it lumbered awkwardly away. Then he began desperately to struggle on, following the tracks in the sand. At the end of an hour specks appeared on the horizon. He looked at them in his delirium and began to laugh uneasily. "I must be out of my head," he said to himself seriously. "It's a mirage. Well, I suppose it is the end. Who'll they put on the case now? Keech, I suppose; yes, Keech; he's a good man. Of course it's a mirage."