“What happened on the river was only what ye might expec’. What happened arter ain’t no man got no right to look fur. In a way, it was even excitin’. Or I don’t know as ye could say that. It was unusual, though.”
Roy’s apprehensions returned to him.
“I’ll try not to string it out,” resumed Weston. “But, remember, I ain’t askin’ ye to believe it.” The fire flared up and Roy saw that the man’s face was both sober and thoughtful. “Nobody believes it. Some of ’em’ll tell you I’m nutty. I’m used to it. I jist want to explain why I’m Sink Hole Weston.”
“Tell it all,” pleaded Roy, suddenly.
“I don’t know what day it wuz I found myself up thar in the sand. An’, as ye kin guess, I don’t know whar it wuz. Don’t know yit,” he added as if this were one of the regrettable details of his adventure. “But one thing I kin make affedavit to,” he said, with a drawl,—“my gun wuz gone, the soles wuz tore off my boots, an’ my hat wuz with the gun, I reckon, I didn’t have a scrap o’ food an’ as fur water, they was a plenty about six hundred feet below me an’ none, I reckoned, within a hundred miles ur more in front o’ me. I set down an’ tried to round up. I knowed I wuz so fur frum whar I started, that I was not agoin’ to try to git back by follerin’ that cursed river, though t’aint a bad river at that, take it all in all.
“It was comin’ night an’ the sun was facin’ me. By that my right hand was pintin’ north. Ef I went south, it stood to reason I must be some’ere nigh Navajo land. That settled goin’ south. Ef I went west, about the only thing I knowed of ’at I could find afore I come to the Nevada Mountains wuz the Ralston desert. An’ I had plenty o’ that whar I wuz. Goin’ east, I had my chice o’ dead craters, the Colorado and Green Rivers, which was like the San Juan only wuss, an’ more deserts.”
“You were certainly up against it,” sighed the boy. “You went north, I suppose.”
“Sometimes north an’ sometimes northwest,” continued Weston. “Depended on the goin’. I was not at jist the top o’ condition, as ye kin guess. But I cut off the tops o’ my boots, patched up a pair o’ soles an’, it bein’ evenin’ then, took a snooze. Sometime in the night I woke up an’ started. It was not much uv a start I didn’t have no preparations to make. Layin’ a trail by the north star I set out kind o’ northwest.
“It begun to git rough right away. That’s the way all along them rivers—the river hole, then a fringe o’ sand an’ then higher ground. Long afore sun up, I was makin’ up some purty stiff hills. When day come, I wuz in ’em. You’d a thought they wuz some life an’ timber thar. Ef they was, I didn’t see neither. As near as I could figger, it was like as ef they’d took all the rock out o’ the San Juan an’ piled it up on a kind o’ table land. They seemed to be big, high ridges o’ rock stretchin’ all over the country with here an’ thar a heap uv it high enough to make a peak.
“That day an’ the next, I knowed I was giner’ly goin’ northwest. At the end o’ the second day, I didn’t keer much whether I ever woke up agin. Only I didn’t exactly go to sleep. My head was wrong, an’ I knowed it. Onct I found myself diggin’ in the sand. I got up sneerin’ at myself. I knowed well enough they was not no water up thar. Then you know what I found myself adoin’? I caught myself atryin’ to spell out my name by layin’ little pieces o’ rock on the sand. That was the limit.