Nobody else in sight but Yagorsha's daughter down at the water-hole.

If the water-hole was narrow; if they missed it!

One party, consisting of Swinden, Campbell, Thompson, and Stock, at about seventy miles from the head of Spencer's Gulf, found good pastoral country and a permanent water-hole called by the natives Pernatty.

PRATHER WOULD NOT WAIT XXXII A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY XXXIII PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT XXXIV "JOHN WINGFIELD, YOU" PART IIIHE FINDS HIS PLACE IN LIFE XXXV BACK TO LITTLE RIVERS XXXVI AROUND THE WATER-HOLE XXXVII THE END OF THE WEAVING XXXVIII

" "And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?" "Five or six.

They were nearing the clump of cotton-woods around the water-hole at the base of a tongue of the range which ran out into the desert, and Firio rode up to whisper in Spanish: "Señor Jack, see there!

Horsemen!" Jack raised his head with a returning sense of his surroundings to see some mounted men, eight in all he counted, riding along the range trail a half mile nearer the water-hole than themselves.

"There is a basin beyond the water-hole and the seepage makes a little pasture," Jack explained.

He looked toward the water-hole significantly.

All the while he had kept watch on the water-hole, and he received Prather's announcement stoically as a confirmation of his suspicions.

When Jack looked away at the water-hole Prather's fingers slipped to his own six-shooter and rested there, twitching nervously; and in the rear Firio was watching both him and Nogales shrewdly.

"IIwas it Leddy that fired on us?" "Yes," said Jack over his shoulder, as he and Firio started up the bank of the arroyo facing the water-hole.

As Prather reached up a trembling hand to take his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around the water-hole rose, possibly to change position.

Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed to the marksmen at the water-hole.

Again, he was happily telling stories to the children; or tragically pleading with Leddy that there had been slaughter enough around the water-hole; or serenely planning the future which he foresaw for himself when the phantoms were laid: "I may not know how to run the store, but I do seem to fit in here.

" "I took the water-hole, then!

In the morning, before we embarked, our barica was filled at a water-hole close at hand; on walking about a quarter of a mile back, we came to the borders of a large circular plain, about one mile in diameter, covered with reeds and other indications of its being a morass or lagoon.

They clustered now in the false water-hole, silent, listless, as if they knew the uselessness of the urge of life on Au Fer reef.

If the rurales were following, they would trail Dex to the water-hole.

" "Take him back to the water-hole.

Within the hour five rurales disembarked from a box-car and crossed to the water-hole, where one of them dismounted and searched for tracks.

The man drank, and Lorry helped him up and across the sand to the rim of the water-hole.

He put High-Chin Bob out of business over by the water-hole yesterday.

The three ponies trotted to the water-hole, sniffed at the water, and, whirling, raced across the mesa, pitching and kicking in the joy of liberation.

A muddy water-hole, surrounded by thickets of willows, indicated their camping ground.