His eyes came back to the fainting man at his feet. Young Van had lost all sense of the world about him. Carhart saw that his lips were moving, and knelt beside him. Then he smiled, a curious, unhumorous smile; for the young engineer was muttering those words which had of late been his brother’s favorites among all the words in our rich language: “D--n Peet!” The chief stood up again to think. And as he gazed off eastward in the general direction of Sherman, toward the place where the arch enemy of the Sherman and Western sat in his office, perhaps devising new excuses to send to the front, those same two expressive words might have been used to sum up his own thoughts. What could the man be thinking of, who had brought the work practically to a stop, who was now in the coolest imaginable fashion leaving a thousand men to mingle their bones with the bones of the buffalo--that grim, broadcast expression of the spirit of the desert. [Illustration: “They went on in this way for nearly an hour.”] But these were unsafe thoughts. His own head was none too clear. It was reeling with heat and thirst and with the monotony of this desolate land. He drew a flask from his pocket,--an almost empty flask,--and placed it against Young Van’s hand. With their two hats propped together he shaded his face. Then, a canteen slung over each shoulder, he pushed ahead, on foot. * * * * * “The Palos River can’t be more than a dozen miles--” had said the guide, pointing southward. That was all. Somewhere off there in the desert it lay, flowing yellow and aimless. Perhaps it was a lie. Perhaps the guide was mistaken, as he had been in the search for the pool. But the last feeble tie that bound these outcasts to reason had snapped at the sight of that unsteady, pointing finger, and only the original sin in them was left. The words of the guide had been heard by one man, and he was off at the instant, his only remark a curse as he knocked a boy out of his way. But others had seen the pointing finger. And still others were moved by the impulse which spurs men, in frantic moments, to any sort of action. In the rush for mounts two men, a half-breed from the Territory and a Mexican, plunged at the same animal. The half-breed was hacking at the nigh trace and the Mexican at the off rein when their eyes met. The mule both had chosen was the nigh leader in a double team. But instead of turning to one of the other three, the men, each with a knife in his hand, fell to fighting; and while they struggled and fell and rolled over and over in the sand, a third man mounted their prize and galloped away.