"You've traveled a long way for it," he said, "and I needed it, I guess.
If you'll let me pay for it--"
"Forget it," said the man amiably, and started his horse. "But better
cut it out, first chance you get. It's bad medicine."
He rode on after his vanishing pack, and Dick took up the trail again.
But before long he began to feel sick and dizzy. The aftertaste of the
liquor in his mouth nauseated him. The craving had been mental habit,
not physical need, and his body fought the poison rebelliously. After
a time the sickness passed, and he slept in the saddle. He roused once,
enough to know that the horse had left the trail and was grazing in a
green meadow. Still overcome with his first real sleep he tumbled out
of the saddle and stretched himself out on the ground. He slept all day,
lying out in the burning sun, his face upturned to the sky.
When he wakened it was twilight, and the horse had disappeared. His face
burned from the sun, and his head ached violently. He was weak, too,
from hunger, and the morning's dizziness persisted. Connected thought
was impossible, beyond the fact that if he did not get out soon, he
would be too weak to travel. Exhausted and on the verge of sunstroke, he
set out on foot to find the trail.
He traveled all night, and the dawn found him still moving, a mere
automaton of a man, haggard and shambling, no longer willing his
progress, but somehow incredibly advancing. He found water and drank it,
fell, got up, and still, right foot, left foot, he went on. Some
time during that advance he had found a trail, and he kept to it
automatically. He felt no surprise and no relief when he saw a cabin in
a clearing and a woman in the doorway, watching him with curious eyes.
He pulled himself together and made a final effort, but without much
interest in the result.
"I wonder if you could give me some food?" he said. "I have lost my
horse and I've been wandering all night."
"I guess I can," she replied, not unamiably. "You look as though you
need it, and a wash, too. There's a basin and a pail of water on that
bench."
But when she came out later to call him to breakfast she found him
sitting on the bench and the pail overturned on the ground.
"I'm sorry," he said, dully, "I tried to lift it, but I'm about all in."