at moment for marching down and driving off their cattle and
plundering the waggons. Such an attack would have been ruin, perhaps
death to all, so there was nothing for it but to ride sullenly on in
company with the now plodding cattle, hour after hour.

"Why don't the Beaver come back, Joses?" cried Bart, pettishly. "If he
were here, his men could take care of the cattle and waggons, while we
went on for water. The lake can't be many miles ahead."

"A good ways yet," said Joses. "That mountain looks close when it's
miles away. Beaver's watching the Injuns somewheres, or he'd have been
back before now. Say, Master Bart, I'm glad we haven't got much farther
to go. If we had, we shouldn't do it."

"I'm afraid not," replied Bart, and then they both had to join in the
task of driving back the suffering cattle into the main body, for they
would keep straying away.

And so the journey went on all that day through the blinding, choking
dust and scorching heat, which seemed to blister and sting till it was
almost unbearable.

"Keep it up, my lads," Bart kept on saying. "There's water ahead. Not
much farther now."

"That mountain gets farther away," said one of the newcomers. "I don't
believe we shall ever get there."

This was a specimen of the incessant complaining of the people, whom the
heat and thirst seemed to rob of every scrap of patience and endurance
that they might have originally possessed.

But somehow, in spite of all their troubles, the day wore on, and Bart
kept hopefully looking out for a glimpse of the water ahead.

They ought to have reached it long before, but the pace of the weary
oxen had been most painfully slow. Then the wind, what little there
was, had been behind them, seeming as out of the mouth of some furnace,
and bringing back upon them the finely pulverised dust that the cattle
raised.

At last, towards evening, the sky began again to cloud over, and the
mountain that had appeared distant seemed, by the change in the
atmosphere, to be brought nearer to them. Almost by magic, too, the
wind fell. There was a perfect calm, and then it began to blow from the
opposite quarter, at first in soft puffs, then as a steady, refreshing
breeze, and instantly there was a commotion in the camp,--the cattle set
off at a lumbering gallop; the mules, heedless of their burdens,
followed suit; the horses snorted and strained at their bridles, and
Joses galloped about, shouting to the teamsters