e the
barrel for water," Joe Two-Hawk said. "It is yet wet with fire-water."
He drained a pint or more of whisky from it. It would have to be burned
out. No one wanted fire-water these days.

Across the hot stretches, from every direction, there moved processions
of livestock being driven to water; stone-boats (boards nailed across
two runners), with barrels bobbing up and down on them, buggies, wagons,
all loaded with cans and barrels.

Ida Mary and I led our livestock to a water hole three miles away,
filling water cans for ourselves. The Ammons caravan moving across the
hot, dry plain was a sorry spectacle, with Ida in the vanguard astride
old Pinto, her hair twisted up under a big straw hat. Lakota insisted
upon jumping the creek bed, and we were not trained to riding to hounds.
In the flank, the brown team and Lakota, the menagerie following behind.
Coming up from the rear, I sat in the One-Hoss Shay behind Crazy Weed,
the blind and locoed mare, with the water cans rattling in the back end
of the buggy. I too wore an old straw hat, big as a ten-gallon sombrero,
pushed back on my head to protect my sunburnt neck, and an old rag of a
dress hanging loose on my small body, which was becoming thinner.

The sun blazed down on the shadeless prairie, and the very air smelled
of heat. The grain was shriveled and burnt. And for shelter from that
vast furnace, a tar-paper shack with a low roof.

As we reached the creek, Crazy Weed, smelling water, leaped to the creek
bed, breaking the tugs as she went, leaving the horseless buggy, the
empty cans and me high and dry on the bank.

We patched up the tugs, fastened them to the singletree with hairpins,
hitched up Pinto, drove down to the water hole and filled our cans.

When we got back to the settlement we saw Lone Star on Black Indian,
waiting for us. He dismounted, threw the reins to the ground and carried
the water cans into the cool cave.

"Don't know what we're goin' to do with the range stock," he said
anxiously, "with the grass dried up and the creeks and water holes on
the range goin' dry."

"Lone Star," I said, "don't you think it's going to rain soon?"

Yesterday I had asked Porcupine Bear, and he had shaken his head and
held up one finger after another, counting off the moons before rain
would come.

"What will become of the settlers?" asked Ida Mary.

"The quicker these homesteadin' herds vacate," Lone Star answered in
that slow drawl of his, "the better