On the contrary, it is light and elastic; while his countenance shows bright and joyous as the beams of the ascending sun.

His very shadow seems to flit over the frosted foliage of the artemisias as lightly as the figure of a gossamer-robed belle gliding across the waxed floor of a ball-room.
Walt Wilder no longer hungers or thirsts.

Though the carcase on his back is still unskinned, a huge collop cut out of one of its hind-quarters tells how he has satisfied the first craving; while the gurgle of water, heard inside the canteen slung under his arm, proclaims that the second has also been appeased.
He is now hastening on to the relief of his comrade, happy in the thought of being able soon to relieve him also from his sufferings.
Striding lightly among the sage-bushes, and looking ahead for the landmark that should guide him, he at length catches sight of it.

The palmilla, standing like a huge porcupine upon the plain, cannot be mistaken; and he descries it at more than a mile's distance, the shadow of his own head already flickering among its bayonet-like blades.
Just then something else comes under his eyes, which at once changes the expression upon his countenance.

From gay it grows grave, serious, apprehensive.