“What’s a rumen?” Varley asked.

Ryder exchanged a glance with the Watermen brothers as if to say everyone should know the term. “It’s the first stomach in an animal like a cow or antelope where they produce their cud. The fluid in it is mostly water and plant juice.”

“I could go for some of that now,” Peter Smythe managed to mumble. A single drop of claret-red blood clung to the corner of his cracked lip. He licked it away before it could fall to the earth.

“But the San’s greatest ability is to find water buried under the sand in dried-out riverbeds that haven’t flowed in a generation.”

“Can you find water like them?” Jon Varley asked.

“I’ve been looking in every streambed we’ve crossed for the past five days,” H. A. said.

The men were startled. None of them had realized they’d crossed any dried-out rivers. To them the desert had been featureless and empty. That H. A. had known about the wadis increased their confidence that he would see them out of this nightmare.

Ryder continued, “There was a promising one day before yesterday but I couldn’t be certain and we can’t afford the time for me to be wrong. I estimate we’re two, maybe three days from the coast, which means this part of the desert gets moisture off the ocean, plus the occasional storm. I’ll find us water, lads. Of that you can be sure.”

It was the most H. A. had spoken since telling the men to dump their guns and it had the desired effect. The Watermen brothers grinned, Jon Varley managed to square his shoulders, and even young Smythe stopped swaying.

A cold moon began to climb behind them as the last rays of the sun sank into the distant Atlantic, and soon the sky was carpeted with more stars than a man could count in a hundred lifetimes. The desert was as silent as a church save for the hiss of sand shifting under boots and hooves and the occasional creak of leather saddlery. Their pace was steady and measured. H. A. was well aware of their weakened condition, but never forgot the hordes that were surely on their trail.

He called the first halt at midnight. The nature of the desert had changed slightly. While they still slogged through ankle-deep sand there were patches of loose gravel in many of the valleys. H. A. had spotted old watering holes in a few of the washes, places where eland and antelope had dug into the hard pan searching for underground water. He saw no sign of humans ever using them, so he assumed they had dried out eons ago. He didn’t mention his discovery to the men but it served to bolster his confidence in finding them a working well.

He allowed the men a double share of water, sure now that he could replenish the canteens and water the horses before sunup. And if he didn’t, there was no use in rationing, for the desert would claim them on the morrow. Ryder gave half his ration to his horse although the others eagerly drank theirs down with little regard to the pack animals.