Chapter Eight. Many Barren Months and Miles

"Well, here come them darn burros, Cash. Cora's colt ain't with 'em though. Poor little devils--say, Cash, they look like hard sleddin', and that's a fact. I'll tell the world they've got about as much pep as a flat tire."

"Maybe we better grain 'em again." Cash looked up from studying the last assay report of the Burro Lode, and his look was not pleasant. "But it'll cost a good deal, in both time and money. The feed around here is played out"

"Well, when it comes to that--" Bud cast a glum glance at the paper Cash was holding.

"Yeah. Looks like everything's about played out. Promising ledge, too. Like some people, though. Most all its good points is right on the surface. Nothing to back it up."

"She's sure running light, all right Now," Bud added sardonically, but with the whimsical quirk withal, "if it was like a carburetor, and you could give it a richer mixture--"

"Yeah. What do you make of it, Bud?"

"Well--aw, there comes that durn colt, bringing up the drag. Say Cash, that colt's just about all in. Cora's nothing but a bag of bones, too. They'll never winter--not on this range, they won't."

Cash got up and went to the doorway, looking out over Bud's shoulder at the spiritless donkeys trailing in to water. Beyond them the desert baked in its rim of hot, treeless hills. Above them the sky glared a brassy blue with never a could. Over a low ridge came Monte and Pete, walking with heads drooping. Their hip bones lifted above their ridged paunches, their backbones, peaked sharp above, their withers were lean and pinched looking. In August the desert herbage has lost what little succulence it ever possessed, and the gleanings are scarce worth the walking after.

"They're pretty thin," Cash observed speculatively, as though be was measuring them mentally for some particular need.

"We'd have to grain 'em heavy till we struck better feed. And pack light." Bud answered his thought.

"The question is, where shall we head for, Bud? Have you any particular idea?" Cash looked slightingly down at the assayer's report. "Such as she is, we've done all we can do to the Burro Lode, for a year at least," he said. "The assessment work is all done--or will be when we muck out after that last shot. The claim is filed--I don't know what more we can do right away. Do you?"

"Sure thing," grinned Bud. "We can get outa here and go some place where it's green."

"Yeah." Cash meditated, absently eyeing the burros. "Where it's green." He looked at the near hills, and at the desert, and at the dreary march of the starved animals. "It's a long way to green. country," he said.

They looked at the burros.

"They're tough little