She felt dizzily for the desert bag
swung from her shoulder, only to find it flat and dry; the
galvanized mouthpiece burned her fingers. With a little shock she
remembered that she had done this very thing several times before,
and her repeated forgetting frightened her, since it seemed to
show that her mind had been slightly unbalanced by the heat. That
perhaps explained why the distant horizon swam and wavered so.
In all probability a man situated as she was would have spoken
aloud, in an endeavor to steady himself; but this woman did
nothing of the sort. Seating herself in the densest shade she
could find--it was really no shade at all--she closed her eyes and
relaxed--no easy thing to do in such a stifling temperature and
when her throat was aching with drought.
At length she opened her eyes again, only to find that she could
make out nothing familiar. Undoubtedly she was lost; the water-
hole might be anywhere. She listened tensely, and the very air
seemed to listen with her; the leaves hushed their faint
whisperings; a near-by cactus held its forty fleshy ears alert,
while others more distant poised in the same harkening attitude.
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