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DeWitt laughed hoarsely

"That's just the way it looks to me, Rhoda But you're just as crazy as I aether and tried to ue

"We must take it turn about When you are crazy I must try to be sane!"

"Good idea!" croaked DeWitt, "only I'm crazy all the time!"

"'O frabjous day! Calloo! Collay! He chortled in his joy!'"

Rhoda patted his hand

"Poor John! Oh, my poor John! I was not worth all this You ht!" Two great tears rolled down her cheeks

DeWitt looked at her seriously

"You aren't as dry as I ah moisture in me to moisten my eyeballs, let alone cry! I am so cracked and dry that you will have to soakwe cohed weakly and John turned aith a hurt look

"It's not a joke!" he said

How long they were, in their staggering, circuitous course, in reaching their goal of cholla, Rhoda never knew She knew that each heavy foot, tingling and scorched, see her back a step for every one that she took forward She knew that she repeatedly offered the last of their water to John and that he repeatedly refused it, urging it on her She knew that the pulp of the barrel cactus that she tried to chew turned to bitter sawdust in her led to refocus her wandering wits on the cholla, it appeared within touch of her hand

Afraid to pause, she adopted a new goal in a far led forward

And so on and on toward a never nearing goal; now falling, now rising, now pausing to strive to hush Dewitt's cracked voice that wandered aies of verse that seemed to his delirium appropriate to the occasion It see as she watched the illih which they moved John's voice did not cease

"Alone! Alone! All, all, alone! Alone on a wide, wide sea! So lonely 'twas that God himself, Scarce seemed there to be!"

"Hush, John! Hush!" pleaded Rhoda

"Alone! Alone! All, all alone!"

repeated the croaking voice

"But I'm with you, John!" Rhoda pleaded, but DeWitt rah The desert floor became a series of sand dunes, a rise and fall of sea-like billows over which they climbed like ants over a need field In the hollow of each wave they rested, sinking in the sand, where, breathless and scorching, the air scintillated above their ain, the desert wind hurtling the hot sand against their parched skins Frequently John refused to rise and Rhoda in her half delirium would sink beside him until the mist lifted from her brain and once more the distant mesa forced itself upon her vision