sand, while constantly
shifting ridges made travel difficult. Only grim necessity--the
suffering of the ponies for water, and their own need for soon reaching
the habitation of man and acquiring food--drove them to the early
venture. They must attain the valley of the Salt Fork that night,
or else perish in the desert--there remained no other choice. Tying
neckerchiefs over their horses' eyes, and lying flat themselves, they
succeeded in pressing slowly forward, winding in and out among the
shifting dunes, with only the wind to guide them. It was an awful trail,
the hoofs sinking deep in drifting sand, the struggling ponies becoming
so exhausted that their riders finally dismounted, and staggered forward
on foot, leading them stumbling blindly after. Once the negro's horse
dropped, and had to be lashed to its feet again; once Keith's pony
stumbled and fell on him, hurling him face down into the sand, and he
would have died there, lacking sufficient strength to lift the dead
weight, but for Neb's assistance. As it was he went staggering blindly
forward, bruised, and faint from hunger and fatigue. Neither man spoke;
they had no breath nor energy left to waste; every ounce of strength
needed to be conserved for the battle against nature. They were fighting
for life; fighting grimly, almost hopelessly, and alone.

About them night finally closed in, black and starless, yet fortunately
with a gradual dying away of the storm. For an hour past they had been
struggling on, doubting their direction, wondering dully if they were
not lost and merely drifting about in a circle. They had debated this
fiercely once, the ponies standing dejectedly, tails to the storm, Neb
arguing that the wind still blew from the south, and Keith contending
it had shifted into the westward. The white man won his way, and they
staggered on uncertain, the negro grasping the first pony's tail to keep
from being separated from his companion. Some instinct of the plains
must have guided them, for at last they dragged themselves out from the
desert, the crunching sand under foot changing into rock, and then to
short brittle grass, at which the ponies nibbled eagerly. The slope led
gradually downward, the animals scenting water, and struggling to break
away. Swaying in their saddles, the riders let them go, and they never
stopped until belly deep in the stream, their noses buried. The
men shivered in their saddles, until, at last satisfied, the ponies
conse