For it is
Satan's own painting on the desert to let men know that Dante's dream is
mild compared to the real art of torment. Men and animals began to give
way under the day's burden, and we moved slowly. In times like these
Jondo stayed with the train, sending Bill Banney and Beverly scouting
ahead. That was the longest day that I ever lived on the Santa Fe Trail,
although I followed its miles many times in the best of its freighting
years.
The weary hours dragged at last toward evening, and a dozen signs in
plains lore told us that water must be near. As we topped a low swell at
the bottom of whose long slide lay the little oasis we were seeking, we
came upon Bill Banney's pony lying dead across the trail. And near it
Bill himself, with bloated face and bleared eyes, muttering
half-coherently:
"Water-hole! Poison! Don't drink!"
And then he babbled of the muddy Missouri, and the Kentucky blue grass,
and cold mountain springs in the passes of the Gloriettas, warning us
thickly of "death down there."
"Down there," beside the little spring shelved in by shale at the lower
edge of the swell, we found a tiny cairn built of clumps of sod and bits
of shale.
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