“What is?” asked Jack.
“That the horses can’t chew,” replied Budge.
“Hu! I guess it would take a bigger cud than you could muster to satisfy a horse—or a mule,” remarked Tanker Ike. “But it’s lucky you had it for us. I was feeling pretty bad.”
The little diversion caused by the production of the gum and the relief it brought, helped them to pass over several miles in a comfortable fashion. But the terrible thirst did not leave them, and as for the horses and mules, they were half crazed, or “locoed,” as Tanker Ike expressed it.
How they traveled the remainder of that day none of them could tell exactly afterward. But they managed to keep on, and just as it was beginning to get dusk there was a sudden movement among the animals.
“They smell water,” cried Ike as the mules, drawing the heavy wagon, broke into a run. “They smell water! They do, for sure!”
And he was right. Half an hour later they came to a small water hole, and here they slaked their thirst, drinking slowly at first, and keeping the animals back from it by main force, until they had each been given a pailful, which they drank greedily. Then, after the life-giving fluid had had a chance to take off the first pangs of thirst, boys, men and horses drank more freely.
“Petrified persimmons!” exclaimed Nat. “I used to think ice-cream sodas were the best ever, but now I think a cupful of water from a mud hole is the finest thing that ever came over the pike. Let’s have another, boys!”
Their sufferings were at an end, and, their thirsts having been slaked, they ate a good meal and rested that night beside the water hole.
The next day they reached the Shoshone River and the end of the desert.