that water is the greatest thing on
earth. I hung over a three-foot hole in a dry stream-bed, and watched
it ooze and seep through the sand, and fill up--oh, so slowly; and I
felt it loosen my parched tongue, and steal through all my dry body
with strength and life. Water is said to constitute three fourths of
the universe. However that may be, on the desert it is the whole world,
and all of life.

Two days passed by, all hot sand and wind and glare. The Mormons sang
no more at evening; Jones was silent; the dogs were limp as rags.

At Moncaupie Wash we ran into a sandstorm. The horses turned their
backs to it, and bowed their heads patiently. The Mormons covered
themselves. I wrapped a blanket round my head and hid behind a sage
bush. The wind, carrying the sand, made a strange hollow roar. All was
enveloped in a weird yellow opacity. The sand seeped through the sage
bush and swept by with a soft, rustling sound, not unlike the wind in
the rye. From time to time I raised a corner of my blanket and peeped
out. Where my feet had stretched was an enormous mound of sand. I felt
the blanket, weighted down, slowly settle over me.

Suddenly as it had come, the sandstorm passed. It left a changed world
for us. The trail was covered; the wheels hub-deep in sand; the horses,
walking sand dunes. I could not close my teeth without grating harshly
on sand.

We journeyed onward, and passed long lines of petrified trees, some a
hundred feet in length, lying as they had fallen, thousands of years
before. White ants crawled among the ruins. Slowly climbing the sandy
trail, we circled a great red bluff with jagged peaks, that had seemed
an interminable obstacle. A scant growth of cedar and sage again made
its appearance. Here we halted to pass another night. Under a cedar I
heard the plaintive, piteous bleat of an animal. I searched, and
presently found a little black and white lamb, scarcely able to stand.
It came readily to me, and I carried it to the wagon.

"That's a Navajo lamb," said Emmett. "It's lost. There are Navajo
Indians close by."

"Away in the desert we heard its cry," quoted one of the Mormons.

Jones and I climbed the red mesa near camp to see the sunset. All the
western world was ablaze in golden glory. Shafts of light shot toward
the zenith, and bands of paler gold, tinging to rose, circled away from
the fiery, sinking globe. Suddenly the sun sank, the gold changed to
gray, then to purple, and shadows formed i