“We are alone,” said I.
“There’s nobody behind you with a big drove of cattle, is there?”
“Nobody at all. We came down here to buy stock, but I don’t believe we want any now.”
“You can have all we’ve got,” said he, with a smile. “We’ll sell ’em to you at a dollar apiece.”
I looked around at the walking skeletons he was willing to dispose of at so meagre a price. They were too far away for me to see much of them, but still I could tell that they were gaunt and scraggy in the extreme. Some of them were lying down flat on their sides, with their heads extended, and when a steer gets that way he is in a bad fix.
“I had no idea that your steers were in such shape,” said I. “Are some of them dead?”
“Oh, no; there’s plenty of life left in them yet. You will find plenty of water on the other side of those willows. You see some cattlemen came up here the other day from the same direction you came from, looking for grass and water, and said they were going to come in at all hazards; that’s what made me pick up my rifle when I saw you.”
“We aint seed no cattlemen down this way,” said Elam. “We aint seed anything but farmers.”
We were too thirsty to waste any more time in talking, and so we rode down on the other side of the willows to find the “plenty of water” the cowboy spoke of. Well, there was plenty of it, such as it was, but it was scattered along the creek in little holes, and had been trampled in by the cattle until it was all roiled up; a filthy place to drink, but boys and horses went at it, and by the time we had got all the water we wanted there wasn’t much left in that hole. We filled our bottles, saw our horses drink all they needed, and then mounted and rode back to where we had left the hospitable cowboy.
“I don’t call that plenty of water,” said Tom, who nevertheless had been a good deal revived by the hearty swig he had taken. “I wish you had some of the water that was overflowing the Mississippi valley when I left it. It was enough to flood this whole country.”