Some claim Yuma is fifty feet above the sea level; others say it is one hundred and fifty below the sea level. I don't know which of these statements is correct, but I do know that Yuma is by far the hottest town I was ever in. As early as half-past seven o'clock next morning the sun began to get uncomfortably hot, and by nine o'clock both Allen and myself were suffering from the heat.
We spent the biggest part of the day in the shade of the large Reservoir building opposite the depot, and but a few feet from the Colorado River.
That night a Mexican living in one of the adobe houses near the railroad yards supplied each of us with a large bottle of water for the long two hundred and eighty mile journey across the desert, but in dodging the brakemen while attempting to board a Los Angeles freight train, we became separated and it was the last I ever saw of my friend Allen.
I managed to hide in a car loaded with scrap iron.
Only once did I leave this car. We reached the first division point, Indio, Cal., about 3 o'clock in the morning.
My bottle of water had long since run dry, and I was once more beginning to suffer the acute pangs of desert thirst. With as little noise as possible, I slipped from the car and into the pump house (which is about the only building of any kind that Indio contains). In fact, between Yuma and Indio, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, there isn't a single town—nothing but desert and cactus trees.
The man in the pump house filled my bottle from a hydrant, and taking a big drink from a large tin cup, which I also filled from the hydrant, I hurried through the darkness to the scrap iron car nearly a half mile down the track.
I was about crawling in, when a low groan from under the car attracted my attention.
Peering under the car, I was amazed to see a man on the rods.
"For God's sake give me a drop of water," he begged piteously.