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Page 27
The wagon train was quite a distance away. She had to start back soon, and yet something inside told her to go farther along the base of this mountain.
There were many plants she could not use, such as spiny cholla and twiggy paper bag bushes. Soon she came to a clump of dried-looking branches that she recognized as smoke trees. Nearby were the low-growing white flowers of chia bushes. There was something about these plants that she knew she should remember . . . and then it came to her. They grew in washes. And washes meantsometimeswater.
Abby looked around. She was perhaps half a mile from the wagon train. She had veered around a bulge in the base of a mountain and could barely make out the white covers of the wagons.
She swayed on her feet, suddenly dizzy. Closing her eyes, she reveled in the unfulfilled sensation of taking a long, refreshing drink of water. She opened her eyes and saw a hazy, shimmering vision of a small wooden cabin at the base of the mountain. As she had the night before, she felt as though she peered through someone else's eyes, experiencing someone else's reflections of sad and angry solitude. That someone was not thirsty, as she was.
Her mind raced suddenly to Arlen, with a thought that his emotions were the ones she shared. But she knew she was wrong. Arlen was far away on horseback, looking for water. He was nowhere near this loop in the mountain. He

 
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