They came with a rush, with a rush they were gone. But Deveril, who since he was taller, had seen more clearly than Lynette across the brush, turned back to her eagerly, wondering if she had seen what he had--if she had noted that one of the men loomed unusually large in the saddle, and how the smaller at his side rode lopsidedly. In all reason Bruce Standing should be dead by now or, at the very least, bedridden. But when did Timber-Wolf ever do what other men expected of him? If he were alive and not badly hurt; if Lynette knew this, then what? Deveril would tell her, or would not tell her, as circumstances should decide for him.
"Come on!" he cried sharply, certain that Lynette had not seen. "While the night and the dark last. Let's hurry."
On and on they went until the dragging hours seemed endless. They saw the wheeling progress of the stars; they saw the pools of gloom in the woods deepen and darken; they felt, like thick black padded velvet, the silence grow deeper, until it seemed scarcely ruffled by the thin passing of the night air. Thus they put many a weary, hard-won mile between them and Big Pine. Hours of that monotonous lifting of boot after boot, of stumbling and straightening and driving on; of pushing through brush copses, of winding wearily among the bigger boles of the forest, of sliding down steep places and climbing up others, with always the lure of the more easy way of the road tempting and mocking.
"We've got to find water again," said Deveril, out of a long silence. "And we've got to dig ourselves in for a day of it. The dawn's coming."
For already the eastern sky stood forth in contrast against west and south and north, a palely glimmering sweep of emptiness charged with the promise of another day. The girl, too tired for speech, agreed with a weary nod. She could think of nothing now, neither of past nor present nor future, save of water, a long, cool bathing of burning mouth and throat, and after that, rest and sleep. Her whole being was resolved into an aching desire for these two simple balms to jaded nature. Water and then sleep. And let the coming day bring what it chose.
Long ago the mountain air, rare and sweet and clean, had grown cold, but their bodies, warmed by exertion, were unaware of the chill. But now, with fatigue working its will upon every laboring muscle, they began to feel the cold. Lynette began shivering first; Deveril, when they stopped a little while for one of their brief rests, began to shiver with her.