SON OF THE WIND
wrists, and a beating determination, he painfully reascended the nose of the watershed and at the top lay down to dry himself in the sun.
His flask and the bread that he had, helped to recover him. He rested while Esmeralda Charley roped himself down one side of the rocky promontory upon which they lay, and set off northward, prospecting the bank of the stream. In the course of two hours the man returned. Perhaps six miles up from the watershed the quicksand made a wide swing across the valley to the hills. But at that point, he said, it would be impossible to get down with the horses, as there was still considerable cliff. He thought that to get around they would have to go back to Beckwith.
Carron looked up at the sun, and then at his watch. Twenty miles from where they were erely to reach the Sugar Loafs? And then to make their way down, ten miles or more over a country obroken stone, and probably involve themselves again in the sand? He suspected a sink somewhere about the base of the hills, where the stream dropped. Such waters flow now above ground, now sunk. That implacable lady, the Sphinx, had surrounded herself with a wall and a moat. He had scaled the one, but he was left on the brink of the other, a thwarted besieger.
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