AT THE STORAGE RESERVOIR
By nine o’clock the next morning we were on our way to the water-storage camp, twenty miles away across the plains.
The wagon-box was piled high with the last of our cantaloupe crop. Jessie and I had risen at daylight to pull them. We had been careful to leave a vacant space in the front of the wagon, and this, fitted up with his favorite little chair and plenty of blankets, made a snug harbor for Ralph. The little fellow was wild with excitement and pleasure at the prospect before him. There was room, besides, in the harbor for a well-filled lunch basket, a jug of water, and, if he became tired of walking, for Guard. The dog trotted on beside the wagon, alert and vigilant, until we were well outside of the valley, when, intoxicated, perhaps, by the sight of such boundless miles over which to chase them, he gave himself up to the pursuit of prairie dogs. An entirely futile pursuit in all cases, but Guard seemed unable to understand the hopelessness of it until some miles had been covered and he was panting with fatigue. The wary little creatures always kept within easy reach of their burrows, a fact which Guard did not comprehend until he had scurried wildly through a half-dozen prairie dog towns in succession. But when the conviction did force itself upon him their most insistent and insolent barking was powerless to arrest his further attention. He had learned his lesson.
I had put the rifle and a well-filled cartridge-belt into the wagon thinking that I might get a shot at a jack-rabbit or cotton-tail, but Guard’s experience impressed me as likely to be mine also should I attempt to kill such small game with a rifle, and I left the gun untouched.
The plains were gray with dust and shimmering in the heat. Clouds of the pungent alkali dust were stirred up by the horses’ feet and by the wagon wheels—we had oiled the wheels after an extravagant fashion, I’m afraid, for I do not remember that Joe ever used up an entire jar of lard, as we did, for that purpose—and our throats were parched, our faces blistered, and our eyes smarting before half the distance to the camp was passed over. The wind, what little there was of it, seemed but to add waves of heat to the torturing waves of alkali dust. Ralph, after whimpering a little with the general discomfort, curled down in his nest and dropped off to sleep, but there was no such refuge for Jessie and me.
“It’s a dreadful thing to be poor!” Jessie exclaimed, at last. There was a desolate intonation in her voice, and my own spirits drooped. The horses dropped into a slow walk.
“We shall have one advantage over Mr. Wilson, whatever happens,” Jessie presently continued.
“How is that?” I inquired. It did not look, at the moment, as if we were ever destined to have the advantage of any one.
“We shall not find the men at dinner; they will have had their dinners and gone to work again.”
“We may find them at supper,” I said, giving Frank an impatient slap with the lines. The blow was a light one, but it took him by surprise, and, as was his wont, he stopped and looked back inquiringly, seemingly anxious to know what was meant by such a proceeding. Jessie snatched up the whip, and I laughed as I invited Frank to go on. “Don’t strike him, please, Jessie! You don’t understand Frank, and he doesn’t understand the meaning of a blow; he thinks, when he is doing his work faithfully and gets struck, that it must have been an accident, and he stops to investigate.”
“Dear me! How much you know—or think you do—about horses,” Jessie returned wearily. “You’re worse than old Joe.” She dropped the whip back into its socket with a petulant gesture. “I’m sorry we started, Leslie. Here we’ve been on the road six or eight hours—”
“A little over three hours, Jessie.”
“Well, we’re not in sight of the promised land yet, and I’m nearly roasted; I shall just melt if we keep on this way much longer.”
“Me is melted; me is all water!” cried Ralph, waking up suddenly, and immediately giving way to forlorn tears. The tears plowed tiny furrows through the dust that clung to his moist cheeks, and had settled in grayish circles underneath his eyes. Jessie looked down at the piteous little figure and her own ill-temper vanished.
“Come up here and look round, you poor hot little mite!” she exclaimed, extending one hand and a foot as a sort of impromptu step-ladder. Ralph clambered up with some difficulty and looked around as directed, but the prospect did not have an enlivening effect on him.
“Where is we?” he demanded, turning his large, dust-encircled eyes on each of us in turn.
“On the plains,” I responded briefly. I was driving; the load was heavy, and the horses, worn with fatigue and the heat, lagged more and more; therefore my anxiety grew, and I had no time to waste on trivialities.
“One need not ask why it never rains here, though,” I suddenly observed, “for behold! Jessie, there is the thing that makes rain unnecessary.”
A glimmer of white had been, for some minutes, slowly growing on the horizon. I had thought at first, that it must be a mirage, but it kept its place so steadily, without that swift, undulating, gliding motion that these familiar plains spectacles always present that I presently became convinced that the white glimmer was a lake, and so that we were within a few miles of our objective point.
“Sure enough, that’s the lake!” Jessie exclaimed, after a long look. “Well, that’s some comfort,” was her conclusion. Ralph stood up on the seat between us and looked, too:
“Me wants a dwink!” he cried, after making quite sure that the white shimmer in the distance was that of water.
Jessie slid off the seat and got hold of the water-jug and tin-cup, then she tried to fill the cup, but the result was disastrous.
“You’ll have to stop the horses, Leslie, I shall spill every drop of water at this rate.”
As the wagon came to a standstill, and while Ralph was drinking, Guard suddenly appeared from his place underneath the wagon—he had thus far declined all invitations to ride—and putting his fore feet on the front hub, looked up, whining beseechingly:
“Dard wants some water, too,” Ralph said.
“He’s got to have it, then,” I declared, and climbed quickly out of the wagon.
“I hope you don’t intend to let him drink out of the cup!” Jessie exclaimed.
“No; hand me the jug, and I’ll pour the water into his mouth.”
“Oh, he can’t drink in that way!”
“Just hand me the jug and see.” She complied, and Guard justified my faith in his intelligence by gulping down the water that I poured into his open mouth, very carefully, scarcely spilling a drop.
In the end we decided to get out and eat our lunch in the shade of the wagon, especially as Ralph was plaintively declaring:
“Me so hundry!”
“We’ll give the horses a chance to eat while we’re selling the melons,” I remarked, as much for Frank’s benefit as anything else, for he had turned his head, and was watching us with reproachful interest, as we sat at our meal. He must have thought us very selfish.
Lunch over, we climbed back into the wagon again, after re-packing the basket. Guard also signified his willingness to ride, now, and we went on, much refreshed by the brief stop and the needed lunch which had hardly lost its consolatory effect when, between one and two o’clock, we drew up before the door of the cook’s tent, on the eastern bank of the great water-storage reservoir. The cook was busy, but signified, after a hasty inspection, that our load was all right.
“Better take it in,” he added, nodding toward one of the three men who were lounging about in the vicinity. I suppose that this friendly young gentleman must have been the commissary clerk, or something of that sort. He called a man to take care of our horses, and chatted with us pleasantly, while another man unloaded the melons. He urged us to come into the dining-tent and let the cook “knock us up a dinner,” but this we declined on the plea that we had already dined, and were extremely anxious to take the homeward road as soon as possible.
“It’s so late, you see,” Jessie observed, consulting father’s big silver watch, which she carried.
“We have already been here some time; how late is it, Jessie?” I asked.
“Why, it’s nearly four!” Jessie made the statement in a tone of dismay, adding: “How late it will be before we get home!”
“I can drive home a great deal faster than we came,” I said.
“How far have you got to go?” inquired the clerk, who had told us that his name was Phillips.
“Twenty miles.”
“That’s a good bit; but it’s a moonlight night.”
“Dear me! We don’t care if it is,” Jessie returned, rather crossly; “we want to get home.”
“You’ll get home all right,” Mr. Phillips assured her, easily. “I’ll have Tom put your horses in at once and here’s the money for your load.” He counted out a fascinating little roll of bills, adding, as he tendered the amount to Jessie, who promptly pocketed it, “I hope you’ll excuse my saying that you appear to be a plucky pair of girls. If you’ve anything more to market—” Jessie shook her head:
“There was a reason; we were obliged to sell the melons,” she ended, lamely. The horses, fed, watered, and evidently greatly refreshed, were, by this time, on the wagon. Mr. Phillips helped us in, and, while doing so, his glance fell on the rifle lying under the seat. He took up the gun and ran his eye over it approvingly.
“Either of you shoot?” he inquired.
“My sister shoots pretty well,” Jessie told him, adding: “We really must be starting, and we are a thousand times obliged to you for your kindness.”
“And particularly for buying the melons,” I could not forbear saying.
Mr. Phillips laughed: “The boys will say that it was you who conferred the obligation, when it comes to sampling those melons,” he said. I had gathered up the lines when he added, suddenly: “Wait!” I waited, while he stepped back into the tent. He re-appeared directly, carrying a half dozen big mallards and a couple of jack-rabbits: “You’ll let me make you a present of these, won’t you?” he asked, smiling, persuasively, as he tossed them into the wagon-box. “I was out hunting this morning, and I had good luck, as I always do.” We thanked him heartily for his gift and drove off feeling not only a good deal richer, but much happier than when we had started out.