“No,” he owned with bitter resignation, “my bones will bleach in this God–forgotten place, and none will ever know my fate.” Then he thought of his home and his father, the stalwart ranchman, and tears welled up in his eyes and a great lump rose in his throat. “Oh, it’s hard to have to die like this,” he moaned, “and yet there is nothing to be done. True, I may live for a day or two yet. I can start out again to–morrow morning and go on stumbling along till I drop exhausted.” It was at this bitter moment that a sudden recollection of a favorite saying of his father’s came into the boy’s mind: “Never give up while you’ve a kick left in you.” Jack thought of the bluff ranchman as the saying came back to him with poignant force. “Never give up while you’ve a kick left in you.” “For shame, Jack Merrill,” he said half aloud, “for shame, to be giving up this way. You’ve a kick left in you, many of them perhaps. What would your dad say if he saw you sitting down like a girl or a baby and giving in before you had to? Don’t you dare to do it again.” Having thus scolded himself, Jack felt somewhat better, though there was still the great dread of a death in the desert upon him. But at least some of his spirit had returned. He resolved to struggle on as soon as he was sufficiently rested. With this determination in his mind, the boy tried to compose himself for sleep. He knew that a good spell of slumber would refresh him almost as much as food or drink. Thus he unconsciously echoed the sentiments of the philosopher who declared that “He who sleeps, dines.” At any rate, the practical Jack Merrill wished to be at his best when he started off once more on his wanderings, so he laid down and composed himself as comfortably as he could. Strange as it may seem that he could sleep under such conditions, slumber he did, although all sorts of wild dreams beset his rest. At one moment he was toiling over a burning desert under a pitiless sun, calling aloud for water. Then again he was in the shade of a delightful group of trees while bright crystal springs flashed and rippled. He was dreaming that he felt the delightful cooling sensation of a cold plunge into one of these rivulets when he awoke with a start. Above him the stars glittered coldly. The yuccas, like grim sentinels, outstretched their gaunt, semaphore–like arms against the night sky. A breeze that seemed chilly after the heat of the day swept the dismal plain. The sensation of coming from that dream of cool green places to that dry, desolate, stony waste gave Jack a fresh shock; but, true to his determination to act as he knew his father would wish him to do, he shook off his gloomy depression and struck out once more toward the east, taking his direction from the North Star, which he sighted by means of the “pointers” in the Dipper.