Ought he not, now that he was rested, make the most of the remaining moments of daylight, and before the glow faded from the west, when he would no longer have any bearings to guide him?
But there was always the risk of waking her!--to what?
The fear of being confronted again with HER fear and of being unable to pacify her, at last decided him to remain.

But he crept softly through the grass, and in the dust of the track traced the four points of the compass, as he could still determine them by the sunset light, with a large printed W to indicate the west! This boyish contrivance particularly pleased him.
If he had only had a pole, a stick, or even a twig, on which to tie his handkerchief and erect it above the clump of mesquite as a signal to the searchers in case they should be overcome by fatigue or sleep, he would have been happy.

But the plain was barren of brush or timber; he did not dream that this omission and the very unobtrusiveness of his hiding-place would be his salvation from a greater danger.
With the coming darkness the wind arose and swept the plain with a long-drawn sigh.

This increased to a murmur, till presently the whole expanse--before sunk in awful silence--seemed to awake with vague complaints, incessant sounds, and low moanings.

At times he thought he heard the halloaing of distant voices, at times it seemed as a whisper in his own ear.