With hand partially shading his aching eyes from the blinding glare, the man studied its every exposed feature, his face hardening again into lines of stern determination.

The girl stirred from her position, flinging back her heavy hair with one hand, and looking up into his face with eyes that read at once his disappointment.
"Have--have you any water left ?" she asked at last, her lips parched and burning as if from fever.
He shook the canteen dangling forgotten at his side.

"There may be a few drops," he said, handing it to her, although scarcely removing his fixed gaze from off that dreary plain.

"We shall be obliged to make those trees yonder; there ought to be water there in plenty, and possibly we may strike a trail." She staggered to her feet, gripping his shoulder, and swaying a little from weakness, then, holding aside her hair, gazed long in the direction he pointed.
"I fairly shake from hunger," she exclaimed, almost angrily, "and am terribly tired and sore, but I reckon I can make it if I 've got to." There was nothing more said between them.

Like two automatons, they started off across the parched grass, the heat waves rising and falling as they stumbled forward.