The second half of the day was as unbroken by speech or incident as the morning. They had nothing to say, as dry of thought as they were despoiled of energy. The shadows were beginning to lengthen when they came to a fork in the trail. One branch bore straight westward, the other slanted toward the south, and both showed signs of recent travel. Following them to the distance was like following the tracks of creeping things traced on a sandy shore. Neither led to anything - sage, dust, the up-standing combs of rocky reefs were all the searching eye could see till sight lost itself in the earth's curve. The girl and the two men stood in the van of the train consulting. The region was new to Courant, but they left it to him, and he decided for the southern route.

For the rest of the afternoon they followed it. The day deepened to evening and they bore across a flaming level, striped with gigantic shadows. Looking forward they saw a lake of gold that lapped the roots of rose and lilac hills. The road swept downward to a crimsoned butte, cleft apart, and holding in its knees a gleam of water. The animals, smelling it, broke for it, tearing the wagon over sand hummocks and crackling twigs. It was a feeble upwelling, exhausted by a single draught. Each beast, desperately nosing in its coolness, drained it, and there was a long wait ere the tiny depression filled again. Finally, it was dried of its last drop, and the reluctant ooze stopped. The animals, their thirst half slaked, drooped about it, looking with mournful inquiry at the disturbed faces of their masters.

It was a bad sign. The men knew there were waterless tracts in the desert that the emigrant must skirt. They mounted to the summit of the butte and scanned their surroundings. The world shone a radiant floor out of which each sage brush rose a floating, feathered tuft, but of gleam or trickle of water there was none. When they came down David lay beside the spring his eyes on its basin, now a muddied hole, the rim patterned with hoof prints. When he heard them coming he rose on his elbow awaiting them with a haggard glance, then seeing their blank looks sank back groaning. To Susan's command that a cask be broached, Courant gave a sullen consent. She drew off the first cupful and gave it to the sick man, his lean hands straining for it, his fingers fumbling in a search for the handle. The leader, after watching her for a moment, turned away and swung off, muttering. David dropped back on the ground, his eyes closed, his body curved about the damp depression.

The evening burned to night, the encampment growing black against the scarlet sky. The brush fire sent a line of smoke straight up, a long milky thread, that slowly disentangled itself and mounted to a final outspreading. Each member of the group was still, the girl lying a dark oblong under her blanket, her face upturned to the stars which blossomed slowly in the huge, unclouded heaven. At the root of the butte, hidden against its shadowy base, the mountain man lay motionless, but his eyes were open and they rested on her, not closing or straying.

When no one saw him he kept this stealthy watch. In the daytime, with the others about, he still was careful to preserve his brusque indifference, to avoid her, to hide his passion with a jealous subtlety. But beneath the imposed bonds it grew with each day, stronger and more savage as the way waxed fiercer. It was not an obsession of occasional moments, it was always with him. As pilot her image moved across the waste before him. When he fell back for words with Daddy John, he was listening through the old man's speech, for the fall of her horse's hoofs. Her voice made his heart stop, the rustle of her garments dried his throat. When his lowered eyes saw her hand on the plate's edge, he grew rigid, unable to eat. If she brushed by him in the bustle of camp pitching, his hands lost their strength and he was sick with the sense of her. Love, courtship, marriage, were words that no longer had any meaning for him. All the tenderness and humanity he had felt for her in the days of her father's sickness were gone. They were burned away, as the water and the grass were. When he saw her solicitude for David, his contempt for the weak man hardened into hatred. He told himself that he hated them both, and he told himself he would crush and kill them both before David should get her. The desire to keep her from David was stronger than the desire to have her for himself. He did not think or care what he felt. She was the prey to be won by cunning or daring, whose taste or wishes had no place in the struggle. He no longer looked ahead, thought, or reasoned. The elemental in him was developing to fit a scene in which only the elemental survived.