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Then, looking around, he saw a pool of water less than a hundred yards away from where he was standing. He closed his eyes and opened them to make sure he wasn't imagining it. The pool was still there.

He hurried toward it. The pool hurried away from him, moving as he moved, stopping when he stopped.

It seemed pointless. He could see there was nothing ahead of him. Nothing but emptiness. He was hot, tired, hungry, and, most of all, thirsty. Maybe he should just turn around now. Maybe he'd already gone halfway and didn't know it.

He kept walking. He still carried the empty sack of sunflower seeds. He didn't know if he might find something to put in it.

The sun was almost directly overhead. He figured he could walk for no more than another hour, maybe two, before he had to turn back.

There wasn't any water. It was a mirage caused by the shimmering waves of heat rising off the dry ground.

After a while he thought he could make out the shape of the mountains through the haze. At first he wasn't sure if this was another kind of mirage, but the farther he walked, the clearer they came into a view. Almost straight ahead of him, he could see what looked like a fist, with its thumb sticking up.

He didn't know how far away it was. Five miles? Fifty miles? One thing was certain. It was more than halfway.

He kept walking toward it, although he didn't know why. He knew he'd have to turn around before he got there. But every time he looked at it, it seemed to encourage him, giving him the thumbs-up sign.

The object, whatever it was, was not on the way to Big Thumb but off to the right. He tried to decide whether to go to it or continue toward Big Thumb. Or maybe just turn around.

There was no point in heading toward Big Thumb, he decided. He would never make it. For all he knew it was like chasing the moon. But he could make it to the mysterious object.

As he continued walking, he became aware of a large object on the lake. He couldn't tell what it was, or even if it was natural or man-made. It looked a little like a fallen tree, although it didn't seem likely that a tree would grow here. More likely, it was a ridge of dirt or rocks.

He changed directions. He doubted it was anything, but the fact that there was something in the middle of all this nothing made it hard for him to pass up. He decided to make the object his halfway point, and he hoped he hadn't already gone too far.

The name of the boat had been painted on the back. The upside-down red letters were peeled and faded, but Stanley could still read the name: Mary Lou.

Someone may have drowned here, he thought grimly -- at the same spot where he could very well die of thirst.

He heard a noise. Something stirred under the boat.

He laughed to himself when he saw what it was. It was a boat -- or part of a boat anyway. It struck him as funny to see a boat in the middle of this dry and barren wasteland. But after all, he realized, this was once a lake.

The boat lay upside down, half buried in the dirt.

"Hey," the thing answered weakly.

"Hey!" Stanley shouted, hoping to scare it back inside. His mouth was very dry, and it was hard to shout very loudly.

On one side of the boat there was a pile of dirt and then a tunnel leading down below the boat. The tunnel looked big enough for a good-sized animal to crawl through.

Then a dark hand and an orange sleeve reached up out of the tunnel.

It was coming out.