After tears came renewed resolution. She tried to guide herself by the stars, but though she could hold a straight course there was no assurance in her mind that she was going toward the A T O. Each step might be taking her farther from home. A lime kiln burned in her throat. She was so worn out from lack of food and the tremendous strain under which she had been carrying on that her knees buckled under her weight as she stumbled through the sand. The bad ankle complained continuously.
In this vast solitude there was something weird and eerie that shook her courage. Nor was the danger all fantastic imaginings. The Indians might yet discover her. She might wander far from beaten trails of travel and die of thirst as so many newcomers had done. Possibilities of disaster trooped through her mind.
She was still a child, on the sunny side of seventeen. So it was natural that when she sat down to rest her ankle she presently began to sob again, and that in her exhaustion she cried herself to sleep.
When her eyes opened, the sun was peeping over the desert horizon. She could tell directions now. The A T O ranch must be far to the northeast of where she was. But scarcely a mile from her ran a line of straggling brush. It must be watered by a stream. She hobbled forward painfully to relieve the thirst that was already a torment to her.
She breasted the rise of a little hill and looked down a gentle slope toward the thicket. For a moment her heart lost a beat. A trickle of smoke was rising from a camp-fire and a man was bending over it. He was in the clothes of a white man. Simultaneously there came to her the sound of a shot.
From her parched throat there came a bleating little cry. She hurried forward, and as she went she called again and still again. She was pitifully anxious lest the campers ride away before they should discover her.
A man with a gun in his hand moved toward her from the creek. She gave a little sobbing cry and stumbled toward him.
[Footnote 8: Cush is made of old corn bread and biscuits in milk, beaten to a batter and fried in bacon grease with salt.]