He saw that she was leaning back against the rocks, that her whole body
drooped, that she looked wearied out.
"I'm going out for some boughs, the softest I can find handy," he said.
"We'll have to sleep on them. And while I'm doing that I've got to
figure out a way to bring some water up here. We don't know what's
ahead and we'd be in hard luck bottled up here all day tomorrow with
nothing to drink. Lord, I'd give a lot for a tin bucket!"
He made a little heap of dead wood close to her hand so that she could
keep her fire going, and put down on the other side of her his rifle
and the long obsidian knife, planning to use his pocket knife for the
work at hand.
"You won't go far?" asked Betty.
"Only a few steps," he assured her. "I'll hear if you call. And you
have the rifle handy."
He was going out when Betty's voice arrested him.
"It's the housekeeper's place to have the buckets ready," was what she
said.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"I'll show you when you come back. You'll hurry, won't you?"
"Sure thing," he answered. And went about his task.
Now Jim Kendric knew as well as any man that there is no bed to compare
with the bed a man may make for himself in the forestlands. But here
was no forest, no thicket of young firs aromatic and springy, nothing
but the harsher vegetation of a hard land where agaves, the _maguey_ of
Mexico, and their kin thrive, where the cactus is the characteristic
growth.
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