“I cut out restin’ an’ got up an’ says, ‘When I stop agin, it’ll be whar I’m goin’ to stay.’ My boots was not no good any more—leastways I didn’t somehow keer to try to tie ’em on no more. Then I rickollected ’bout starvin’ people chawin’ thar shoe leather. I tried it. Don’t you believe it’s wuth while. Anyway, I was not hungry. A little water would ahelped but, mostly, I reckon I jist longed to git out o’ that rock. That’s what bothered me. Curious like, it got to seem as if I could git whar I couldn’t see them walls ever’thing’d be all right. You’re agettin’ batty when you git that way.
“I kin remember the moon come out. But that made me mad. It looked so much like the sun. It was ashinin’ all over the rocks I had come to kind o’ despise. But thar was one place ’at wuz dark and I throwed away my boots an’ run in thar like as if somepin was a chasin’ me. An’ I kept agoin’ till, I reckon, I jist keeled over. I was not plannin’ to wake up no more, but I did. An’ thar was them rocks.
“I didn’t feel much like gittin’ up. But, fin’ly I turned over so’s I wouldn’t see them bits o’ granite er whatever they air. An’, lo and behold, they was not no rock at all whar my eyes fell. After awhile, I figgered out that this was a good thing. And then I knowed what I wuz tryin’ to do—I wuz tryin’ to convince myself ’at I ought to go over whar the rocks stopped.
“I couldn’t walk, so I crawled. Some o’ my thinkin’ apparatus seemed gone, but I got away all right—I was out o’ the rocks. Then I rickollected. I says, ‘They ought to be water here whar they ain’t no rocks. Whar’s the water?’ They was not no answer to that, an’ they was not no water. I wuz the maddest man ye ever see. ‘Whar’s the water?’ I yelled. Not actu’ly, ye know, ’cause my tongue was not movin’ seein’ as how it had my jaws pried open.
“Now comes a cur’ous thing,” continued Mr. Weston. “You’d athought I was all in, me acrawlin’ on my hands an’ knees the night before. But this goin’ without no water has funny angles. I was mad and demandin’ the water that should ’abeen waitin’ fur me. An’ on them raw feet o’ mine I started to find it. I couldn’t talk, an’ I couldn’t think, to speak of, but I could see. An’ afore I quit I saw smoke.
“Somehow, that didn’t int’rest me; didn’t even surprise me. But it was right whar I thought water was, an’, somehow, I kept goin’. This is one place they say I’m nutty. I’ve forgot a good deal about gittin’ out o’ the rocks, but I’ll make affedavit I went toward that smoke all day. How do I figger that? It was black all around me when I quit goin’.
“When I knowed anything agin, I knowed I was with Injuns. Couldn’t fool me on Injun smell. An’ when an old Injun woman poured water on my tongue, I jist shet my eyes an’ went to sleep agin.”