"Hope not!" snapped Tom, his eyes glinting. "_I_ want Salezar! I want him in my two hands, with plenty o' time an' n.o.body around! I'd as soon have _him_ as Armijo!"

"Who's he?" asked a tenderfoot. "And what about the Texans, and this fight here?"

"He's the greaser cur that had charge o' th' Texan prisoners from Santa Fe to El Paso, where they war turned over to a gentleman an' a Christian," answered Tom, his face tense. "I owe him fer th' death, by starvation an' abuse, of as good a friend as any man ever had: an' if I git my hands on him he'll pay fer it! _That's_ who he is!"

The first day's travel across the dry stretch, notwithstanding the start had been later than was hoped for, rolled off more than twenty miles of the flat, monotonous plain. Even here the grama gra.s.s was not entirely missing, and a nooning of two hours was taken to let the animals crop as much of it as they could find. While the caravan was now getting onto the fringe of the Kiowa and Comanche country, trouble with these tribes, at this time of the year, was not expected until the Cimarron was reached and for this reason the urging for mileage was allowed to keep the wagons moving until dark. During the night the wagoners arose several times to change the picket stakes of their animals, hoping by this and by lengthened ropes to make up for the scantiness of the gra.s.s.

In one other way was the sparsity of the grazing partly made up, for the grama gra.s.s was a concentrated food, its small seed capsules reputed to contain a nourishment approaching that of oats of the same size.

The heat of the day had been oppressive and the contents of the water casks were showing the effects of it. The feather-headed or stubborn know-it-alls who had ignored the call of "water sc.r.a.pe" back on the bank of the Arkansas now were humble pilgrims begging for drinks from their more provident companions. Tom and Hank had filled their ten-gallon casks and put them in Joe Cooper's wagons for the use of his and their animals which, being mules, found a dry journey less trying than the heavy-footed oxen of other teams. The mules also showed an ability far beyond their horned draft fellows in picking up sufficient food; they also were free from the foot troubles which now began to be shown by the oxen. The triumphant wagoners of the muddier portions of the trail, whose oxen had caused them to exult by the way they had out-pulled the mules in every mire, now became thoughtful and lost their levity.

Breakfast was cooked and eaten before daylight and the wagons were strung out in the four column formation before dawn streaked the sky. A few buffalo wallows, half full of water from the recent rains, relieved the situation, and the thirsty animals emptied their slightly alkaline contents to the last obtainable drop. This second day found the plain more barren, more desolate, its flat floor apparently interminable, and the second night camp was not made until after dark, the wagons corralling by the aid of candle lanterns slung from their rear axles. It was a silent camp, lacking laughter and high-pitched voices; and the begging water seekers, while not denied their drinks, were received with a sullenness which was eloquent. One of them was moved to complain querulously to Tom Boyd of the treatment he had received at one wagon, and forthwith learned a few facts about himself and his kind.

"Look hyar," drawled Tom in his best frontier dialect. "If I war runnin'

this caravan yer tongue would be hangin' out fer th' want o' a drink.

You war warned, fair an' squar, back on th' Arkansas, ter carry all th'

water ye could. But ye knew it all, jest like ye know it all every time a better man gives ye an order. If it warn't fer yer kind th' Injuns along th' trail would be friendly. Hyar, let me tell ye somethin':

"We been follerin', day after day, a plain trail, so plain that even _you_ could foller it. But thar was a time when thar warn't no trail, but jest an unmarked plain, without a landmark, level as it is now, all 'round fur's th' eye could reach. Thar warn't much knowed about it years ago, an' sometimes a caravan wandered 'round out hyar, its water gone an' th' men an' animals slowly dyin' fer a drink. Some said go _this_ way, some said to go _that_ way; others, _other_ ways. n.o.body knowed which war right, an' so they went every-which way, addin' mile to mile in thar wanderin'. Then they blindly stumbled onter th' Cimarron, which they had ter do if they follered thar compa.s.ses an' kept on goin' south; an' when they got thar they found it dry! Do ye understand that? They found th' river _dry_! Jest a river bed o' sand, mile after mile, dry as a bone.

"Which way should they go? It warn't a question _then_, o' headin' fer Santa Fe; but o' headin' _any_ way a-tall ter git ter th' nearest water.

If they went down they was as bad off as if they went up, fer th' bed war dry fer miles either way in a dry season. Sufferin'? h.e.l.l! you don't know what sufferin' is! A few o' you fools air thirsty, but yer beggin'

gits ye water. Suppose thar warn't no water a-tall in th' hull caravan, fer men, wimmin, children, or animals? Suppose ye war so thirsty that you'd drink what ye found in th' innards o' some ol' buffalo yer war lucky enough ter kill, an' near commit murder ter git furst chanct at it? That war done onct. Don't ye let me hear ye bellerin' about bein'

thirsty! Suppose we all had done like you, back thar on th' Arkansas?

An' don't ye come ter _us_ fer water! If we had bar'ls o' it, we'd pour it out under yer nose afore we'd give ye a mouthful! Yer larnin' some lessons this hyar trip, but yer larnin' 'em too late. Go 'bout yer business an' think things over. We're comin' ter bad Injun country. If ye got airy sense a-tall in yer chuckle head ye'll mebby have a chanct ter show it."

Before noon on the third day, after crossing more broken country which was cut up with many dry washes through which the wagons wallowed in imminent danger of being wrecked, the caravan came to the Cimarron, and found it dry. Cries of consternation broke out on all sides, and were followed by dogmatic denials that it was the Cimarron. The arguments waged hotly between those who were making their first trip and the more experienced traders. Who ever heard of a dry river? This was only another dry wash, wider and longer, but only a wash. The Cimarron lay beyond.

Here ensued the most serious of all the disagreements, for a large number of the members of the caravans scoffed when told that by following the plain wagon tracks they would soon reach the lower spring of the Cimarron. How could the spring be found when this was not the Cimarron River at all? They knew that when Woodson had been elected at Council Grove that he was not fitted to take charge of the caravan; that his officers were incompetent, and now they were sure of it. Anyone with sense could see that this was no river. If it were a river, then the prairie-dog mounds they had just pa.s.sed were mountains. Here was a situation which needed more than tact, for if the doubting minority was allowed to follow their inclinations they might find a terrible death at the end of their wanderings. Dogmatic and pugnacious, almost hysterical in their repeated determination to go on and find the river, they must be saved, by force if necessary, from themselves. They would not listen to the plea that they go on a few miles and let the spring prove them to be wrong; there was no spring to be found in a few miles if it was located on the Cimarron. Woodson and others argued, begged, and at last threatened. They pointed out that they were familiar with every foot of the trail from one end to the other; that they had made the journey year after year, spring and fall; that here was the deeply cut trail, pointing out the way to water, where other wagons had rolled before them, following the plain and unequivocal tracks. The debate was growing noisier and more heated when Tom stepped forward and raised his hand.

"Listen!" he shouted again and again, and at last was given a grudged hearing. "Let's prove this question, for it's a mighty serious one," he cried. "Last year, where th' trail hit th' Cimarron, which had some water in it then, a team of mules, frantic from thirst, ran away with a Dearborn carriage as the driver was getting out. When we came up with them we found one of them with a broken leg, struggling in the wreckage of the carriage. I have not been out of your sight all morning, and if I tell you where to find that wrecked carriage, and you _do_ find it, you'll know that I'm tellin' th' truth, an' that this is th' Cimarron.

Go along this bank, about four hundred yards, an' you'll find a steep-walled ravine some thirty feet higher than th' bed of th' river.

At th' bottom of it, a hundred yards from th' river bank, you'll find what's left of th' Dearborn. When you come back we'll show you how to relieve your thirst and to get enough water to let you risk goin' on to th' spring."

Sneers and ridicule replied to him, but a skeptical crowd, led by the man he had lectured the night before, followed his suggestion and soon returned with the word that the wrecked carriage had been found just where Tom had said it would be. The contentious became softened and made up in sullenness what they lacked in pugnacity; for there are some who, proven wrong, find cause for anger in the correction, their stubbornness of such a quality that it seems to prefer to hold to an error and take the penalties than to accept safety by admitting that they are wrong.

In the meanwhile the experienced travelers had gone down into the river bed and dug holes in the sand which, thanks to the recent rains, was a masked reservoir and yielded all the water needed at a depth of two or three feet. After a hard struggle with the thirsty animals to keep them from stampeding for the water their nostrils scented, at last all had been watered and the wagons formed for the noon camp. Humbled greenhorns who had neglected the "water sc.r.a.pe" at the Arkansas were silently digging holes along the river bed and filling every vessel they could spare. They were making the acquaintance of a river of a kind they never had seen before.

Here they found a dry stretch, despite the heavy rains; had they now gone down or up its bed they would have found alternating sections of water and dry sand, and in the water sections they would have found a current. Some of the traders maintained that its real bed was solid, unfractured rock, many feet below the sand which covered it, which held the water as in a pipe and let it follow its tendency to seek its level.

The deep sand blotted and hid the meager stream where the bottom was farther below the sand's surface; but where the porous layer was not so thick, the volume of water, being larger than that of the sand, submerged the filling and flowed in plain sight. Some of the more uncritical held that the water flowed with the periodicity of tides, which like many other irrational suppositions, seemed to give the required explanation of the river's peculiarities. There was no doubt, however, about the porosity of its sandy bed, nor the amount of sand in it, for even after the most severe and prolonged summer rainstorms, which filled the river to overflowing, a few days sufficed to dry it up again and restore its characteristics.

Having full water casks again the hysteria had subsided and the caravan set out toward the lower spring, which was reached just before nightfall. Here they found two men comfortably camped, despite the fact that they were in the country of their implacable foes. At first they showed a poorly hidden alarm at the appearance of the wagons but, finding that they aroused no especial interest, they made themselves a part of the camp and began to get acquainted; but it was noticeable that they chose the hunters and trappers in preference to the traders, and carefully ignored the many Mexicans with the train. But no matter how careful they were in their speech they could not hide their ident.i.ty, for the b.u.t.tons on their torn and soiled clothing all showed the Lone Star of Texas, and to certain of the plainsmen this insignia made them cordially welcome. Among the Mexicans it made them just as cordially hated.

Tom Boyd espied them when the corral had been formed and invited them to join him and Hank at supper. A few words between the Texans and the two plainsmen established a close bond between them, and they became friends the instant Tom mentioned the partner he had lost on the march of the First Texan Expedition. Hank's careless reference to the treatment his partner had given Armijo on the streets of Santa Fe caused them to look carefully around and then, in low voices, tell the two plainsmen about the events which recently had transpired between the Cimarron and the Arkansas.

"Th' greasers in this hyar train air plumb lucky," said one of the Texans, who called himself Jed Burch. "Ain't that so, Buck?"

Buck Flint nodded sourly. "They kin thank them d----d dragoons o' yourn, friend," he answered.

"How's that?" asked Tom. "An' what about th' fight we saw signs of, a couple o' days back?"

"It's all part of a long story," replied Jed, gloomily. "Reckon ye might as well have th' hull of it, so ye'll know what's up, out hyar." He looked around cautiously. "Don't want no d----d greasers larnin' it, though. Who air these fellers comin' now?"

"Good friends o' ourn," said Hank. "Couple o' hunters that hang out, most o' th' time, at Bent's Fort."

Jim and Zeb arrived, were introduced and vouched for, and the little circle sat bunched together as the strangers explained some recent history.

"Ye see, boys," began Burch, "us Texans air pizen ag'in greasers, 'specially since Armijo treated McLeod's boys wuss nor dogs. So a pa.s.sel o' us got together this spring an' come up hyar ter git in a crack they wouldn't fergit. Me an' Buck, hyar, was with th' first crowd, under Warfield, an' we larned 'em a lesson up on th' Mora. Thar warn't more'n a score of us, an' we raided that village, nigh under th' nose o' Santer Fe, killed some o' th' greasers, didn't lose a man, an' run off every hoss they had, ter keep 'em from follerin' us. But we got careless an'

one night th' danged greasers an' settlement Injuns come up ter us an'

stampeded all thar own hosses an' ourn, too, an' didn't give us a lick at 'em. That put us afoot with all our stuff. Thar warn't nothin' we could do, then, but burn our saddles an' what we couldn't carry, an'

hoof it straight fer Bent's. We was on U.S. soil thar, so Warfield disbanded us an' turned us loose; but we knowed whar ter go, an' we went.

"Colonel Snively war ter be at a sartin place on th' Arkansas, an' he war thar. We jined up with him an' went along this hyar trail, larnin'

that Armijo war a-lookin' fer us somewhar on it. h.e.l.l! He warn't a-lookin' fer us: he had a powerful advance guard out feelin' th' way, but _he_ warn't with it. We come up ter that party and cleaned it up, n.o.body on our side gittin' more'n a scratch. But we couldn't git no news about th' caravan that war due ter come along 'most any day, an' some o'

th' boys got discouraged an' went home. Th' rest o' us went back ter th'

Arkansas, campin' half a day's ride below th' Caches, whar we could keep our eyes on th' old crossin' an' th' main trail at th' same time. An' we hadn't been thar very long afore 'long comes th' caravan, full o'

greasers. But, h.e.l.l: it war guarded by a couple hundred dragoons under yer Captain Cook which kept us from hittin' it till it got acrost th'

river an' past th' sand-hills, whar U.S. troops da.s.sn't go, seein' it's Texas soil.

"Everythin' would 'a' been all right if Snively hadn't got polite an'

went over ter visit Cook. They had a red-hot palaver, Cook sayin' he warn't goin' ter escort a caravan till it was plumb inter danger an'

then stand by an' let it go on ter git wiped out. Snively told him we warn't aimin' ter wipe it out, but only ter get th' greasers with it.

They had it powerful hard, I heard, an' Cook up an' says he's goin' ter take our guns away from us if it cost him every man he had. Danged if he didn't do it, too!"

Flint was laughing heartily and broke in. "Wonder what he thought o' our weapons?" he exulted. "Not one o' 'em that he got from _our_ bunch war worth a dang."

Burch grinned in turn. "Ye see, we had took th' guns belongin' ter Armijo's scoutin' party, an' when Cook took up his collection, a lot o'

th' boys, hidin' thar own good weapons, sorrerfully hands over th'

danged _escopetas_ an' blunderbusses an' bows an' arrers o' th'

greasers. However, he disarmed us an' kept us thar till th' caravan got such a big start thar warn't no earthly use o' goin' after it, thar not bein' more'n sixty or seventy o' us that had good weapons. Some o' th'

boys struck out fer home, an' a couple o' score went with th' dragoons back ter Missouri. Us that war left, about as many as went home, made Warfield captain ag'in an' went after th' danged caravan, anyhow. We follered it near ter Point o' Rocks before we gave it up. n.o.body reckoned thar war two caravans on th' trail this year, so Warfield an'

most o' th' boys went back ter Texas; but thar's considerable few o' us roamin' 'round up hyar, dodgin' th' Comanches on a gamble o' gittin' in a crack at some o' Armijo's sojers that might come scoutin' 'round ter see if we has all went back. Anyhow, bein' so fur from home, an'

hankerin' fer a little huntin', we figgered that we might stay up hyar till fall, or mebby all winter if we hung out at Bent's."

"We made a big mistake, though," confessed Flint. "Ye see, a greaser must 'a' got away from that fight an' took th' news ter Armijo. When we pa.s.sed Cold Spring, follerin' th' caravan, we come on his camp, an' it war plumb covered with ridin' gear an' belongin's that none o' his brave army had time ter collect proper. Some o' us that had ter burn our saddles war ridin' bareback, but we got saddles thar. He must 'a' lit out _p.r.o.nto_ when he larned Texans war a-rampagin' along th' trail. From th' signs he didn't even wait fer th' caravan he war goin' ter protect, but jest went a-kiyotin' fer home."

"He knew th' difference between starved an' betrayed Texans, an' Texans that war fixed ter fight," growled Tom. "Go on: what was th' mistake?"

"Wall, Warfield said that if we had made that vanguard surrender peaceful, which they would 'a' done, we could 'a' captured every man, kept th' news from Armijo, an' larned jest whar ter find him. He would 'a' been waitin' fer his scoutin' party, an' some mornin' about daylight he would 'a' found a scoutin' party--from Texas, an' mad an' mean as rattlers. It don't allus pay ter let yer tempers git th' best o' ye, an'

make ye jump afore ye look. We'd 'a' ruther got Armijo than th' whole cussed advance guard, an' th' rest o' his army, too."

"With Salezar," muttered Tom.

Burch jumped. "Aye!" he snarled. "With Salezar! Fer them two I'd 'a'

been in favor o' lettin' all th' rest go!"

"What you boys goin' ter do now?" asked Hank.

"Fool 'round up hyar, dodgin' war-parties that air too big ter lick,"

answered Flint. "We been scoutin' up th' river, an' our friends air on a scout back in th' hills, tryin' ter locate th' nearest Comanche village.