CHAPTER FOURTEEN,
THE CHEWED SUGAR CANE
"I'd like to have trailed you fellows," sighed a voice from the
corner.
"Would you!" said Colorado Rogers grimly.
It was five days to the next water. But they were worse than the
eight days before. We were lucky, however, for at the spring we
discovered in a deep wash near the coast, was the dried-up skull
of a horse. It had been there a long time, but a few shreds of
dried flesh still clung to it. It was the only thing that could
be described as food that had passed our lips since breakfast
thirteen days before. In that time we had crossed the mountain
chain, and had come again to the sea. The Lord was good to us.
He sent us the water, and the horse's skull, and the smooth hard
beach, without breaks or the necessity of climbing hills. And we
needed it, oh, I promise you, we needed it!
I doubt if any of us could have kept the direction except by such
an obvious and continuous landmark as the sea to our left. It
hardly seemed worth while to focus my mind, but I did it
occasionally just by way of testing myself. Schwartz still threw
away his gold coins, and once, in one of my rare intervals of
looking about me, I saw Denton picking them up.
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