"Look at the horses!" she exclaimed. "They see it, too!" The animals stood with ears cocked forward, and dirt-caked nostrils distended, gazing into the south. Endicott sprang to his slicker, and producing the flask, saturated his handkerchief with the thick red liquid. He tried to sponge out the mouths and noses of the horses but they drew back, trembling and snorting in terror.
"Why, it's blood!" cried the girl, her eyes dilated with horror. "From the horse that died," explained Endicott, as he tossed the rag to the ground.
"But, the water--surely there was water in the flask last night!" Then, of a sudden, she understood. "You--you fed it to me in my sleep," she faltered. "You were afraid I would refuse, and that was my dream!"
"Mind over matter," reminded Endicott, with a distortion of his bleeding lips that passed for a grin. Again he fumbled in his slicker and withdrew the untouched can of tomatoes. He cut its cover as he had seen Tex do and extended it to the girl. "Drink some of this, and if the horses hold out we will reach the river in a couple of hours."
"I believe it's growing a little cooler since that awful wind went down," she said, as she passed the can back to Endicott. "Let's push on, the horses seem to know there is water ahead. Oh, I hope they can make it!"
"We can go on a-foot if they can't," reassured the man. "It is not far."
The horses pushed on with renewed life. They stumbled weakly, but the hopeless, lack-lustre look was gone from their eyes and at frequent intervals they stretched their quivering nostrils toward the long green line in the distance. So slow was their laboured pace that at the end of a half-hour Endicott dismounted and walked, hobbling clumsily over the hot rocks and through ankle-deep drifts of dust in his high-heeled boots. A buzzard rose from the coulee ahead with silent flapping of wings, to be joined a moment later by two more of his evil ilk, and the three wheeled in wide circles above the spot from which they had been frightened. A bend in the coulee revealed a stagnant poison spring. A dead horse lay beside it with his head buried to the ears in the slimy water. Alice glanced at the broken chain of the hobbles that still encircled the horse's feet.