Tom felt better and told his companion how he felt after tasting the warm rabbit's blood, and how he had nearly gone off into the sleep of death.
"If you had been a little longer finding me," said Tom, "I should soon have been out of this sad world." They fired a signal gun, looked down at the bones of the rabbit, drank more water, and gradually felt new life coming to them.

The mountains seemed more fertile, and there was brush and grass near by, timber farther up, and still higher a cap of snow extending far along the range, both north and south.

Towards night on this eventful day the scattered travelers began to come slowly into camp attracted by the guns and the smoke of the fire made by those who first found the water.

Some were nearly as far gone as Tom Shannon was, and great caution had to used in giving them water on their empty stomach.

One man named Robinson became so weak before he got near camp that his companions placed him on the back of one of the animals and a man walked on either side to catch him if he fell off.