day long we ran the gauntlet of the hot, flying sand. Night came
again, a cold, windy night. I slept well until a mule stepped on my
bed, which was conducive to restlessness. At dawn, cold, gray clouds
tried to blot out the rosy east. I could hardly get up. My lips were
cracked; my tongue swollen to twice its natural size; my eyes smarted
and burned. The barrels and kegs of water were exhausted. Holes that
had been dug in the dry sand of a dry streambed the night before in the
morning yielded a scant supply of muddy alkali water, which went to the
horses.

Only twice that day did I rouse to anything resembling enthusiasm. We
came to a stretch of country showing the wonderful diversity of the
desert land. A long range of beautifully rounded clay stones bordered
the trail. So symmetrical were they that I imagined them works of
sculptors. Light blue, dark blue, clay blue, marine blue, cobalt
blue--every shade of blue was there, but no other color. The other time
that I awoke to sensations from without was when we came to the top of
a ridge. We had been passing through red-lands. Jones called the place
a strong, specific word which really was illustrative of the heat amid
those scaling red ridges. We came out where the red changed abruptly to
gray. I seemed always to see things first, and I cried out: "Look! here
are a red lake and trees!"

"No, lad, not a lake," said old Jim, smiling at me; "that's what haunts
the desert traveler. It's only mirage!"

So I awoke to the realization of that illusive thing, the mirage, a
beautiful lie, false as stairs of sand. Far northward a clear rippling
lake sparkled in the sunshine. Tall, stately trees, with waving green
foliage, bordered the water. For a long moment it lay there, smiling in
the sun, a thing almost tangible; and then it faded. I felt a sense of
actual loss. So real had been the illusion that I could not believe I
was not soon to drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters.
Disappointment was keen. This is what maddens the prospector or
sheep-herder lost in the desert. Was it not a terrible thing to be
dying of thirst, to see sparkling water, almost to smell it and then
realize suddenly that all was only a lying track of the desert, a lure,
a delusion? I ceased to wonder at the Mormons, and their search for
water, their talk of water. But I had not realized its true
significance. I had not known what water was. I had never appreciated
it. So it was my destiny to learn