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And almost before the words had left his lips he cried out in a new tone, a tone of horror, and, seizing Argyl's hand in his, ran with her, crying for her to hurry, urging her to run with him, away from the dam. For his eyes had seen another thing in the creek-bed, a something just at the base of the dam at its lowest side.
He's in a fever the worst kind. This ain't sleep it's stupor." He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be different.
Asberry found a place at the foot of a huge pine where the undergrowth would cloak him. Twenty yards below ran the creek-bed road, returning from its long horseshoe deviation. When he had taken his position, his faded butternut clothing matched the earth as inconspicuously as a quail matches dead leaves, and he settled himself to wait.
Dancing's linemen strung arc-lights along the creek until the canyon twinkled at night like a mountain village, and men in three shifts worked elbow to elbow unceasingly to run the switchbacks down to the creek-bed. There, by cribbing across the bottom, they got in a temporary line. Train movement was thrown into a spectacle of confusion.
He was almost to the creek-bed, naked to the sunlight, and a bad place to cross with guns going from above. He pulled up, slipped from his horse, and slapped him on the flank. The pony leaped forward, dashed across the creek-bed, and cut into the trail beyond. A bullet flattened to a silver splash on a boulder. Another bullet shot a spurt of sand into the air.
Here the creek wandered in broad horseshoe curves through the flats, and here, to save time, he began short-cutting the flats instead of keeping to the creek-bed. And black dark found him back on the creek-bed feeling for the trail. After an hour of futile searching, too wise to go farther astray, he built a fire, fed each dog half a fish, and divided his own ration in half.
Coolly the lad levelled, and when his pistol spoke, Babe's mighty arms flew above his head and the boy heard his heavy body crash down into the undergrowth. In the terrible stillness that followed the boy stood shaking in his tracks stood until he heard the clatter of horses' hoofs in the creek-bed far below.
Then he tended the fire, unstrapped the light pack from her back, and got out a complete change of foot- gear. Shorty returned along the creek-bed and climbed the bank to them. "I sure staked a full thousan' feet," he proclaimed. "Number twenty-seven and number twenty-eight, though I'd only got the upper stake of twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch behind.
Only three weeks before, as we hunted for it through scrub and bush and creek-bed, the Yellow Hole had been one of our Unknown Waters, tucked snugly away in an out-of-the-way elbow of creek country, and now we found it transformed into the life-giving heart of a bustling world of men and cattle and commerce.
So far as he could see, it in nowise differed from the arid plain across which they had ridden. It was a pebbly tract, covered with sagebrush and cacti, which dropped abruptly to a creek-bed that had no water in it. Filled with sudden misgivings, he asked feebly: "What's it good for?" "Look at the view!" said Pinkey, impatiently. "I can't eat scenery." "It'll be a great place for dry-farmin'."
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