I was ahead on the trail with Hosea; we were both suffering physical torture. My system rejected tobacco; the saliva in my throat and mouth had dried up; my jaws would not stay closed. We looked back; the column was halted. A negro soldier was coming toward us; we waited for him to come up. "The captain wishes you to wait for the command," he said. We dismounted. The soldier said he was afraid some of the troops would get ugly; they were complaining, bitterly about the thirst and heat. The command came on, but it was demoralized. The Blue sand-hills were in plain view. We could see the outlines of them with the scattered shrubbery along their slopes.
We had been traveling along north of these hills for several miles. The trail was turning southwest again. Captain Nolan told me to ask Hosea if he could find the Laguna Plata. Hosea said he could. Ask him when he could get back from there by going now. Hosea studied a moment and counted on his fingers. His answer was, "midnight." Then Hosea asked what the captain meant.
"Captain Nolan," said Harvey, "I will pick out ten of my strongest men and take all the canteens and start them for Laguna Plata for water. We will follow the course for there to-night, and they, returning with water, will meet us and end this horrible feeling that we all have. When the sun goes down those prostrate men in the rear will revive. I can then get them together. I'll send my best horses with the men and they will bring us water in the night. Otherwise we will all perish. Will you send the guide with my men?"
Harvey was resting in what little shade his horse could furnish him. He called me to him. He said: "What do you think of it?"
I said Hosea told me we could get plenty of water in the sand-hills not over eight miles from here.
Harvey straightened up, and, addressing Nolan, said: "Hosea has never disappointed us. He says that eight miles from here in the sand-hills is plenty of water. We may have to fight the Indians first for it, but we will shoot them away from the water."
"Look," said Nolan, "I have twenty-five men prostrated. Look at your own men, suffering the tortures of the d—d. We are all suffering this minute, and if this keeps up much longer we will each be dethroned of his reason, and be a wandering lot of maniacs until a merciful death relieves us."
Tears were coursing down his cheeks. He was nearly sixty-five years of age, and was ready for the retired list. He had crossed the plains to Utah in 1857, being a sergeant in the First United States Dragoons, that were sent to Salt Lake during the Mormon troubles; had been in twenty-two fights and battles during the Rebellion, and had campaigned on the Indian frontier ever since. He was now too old for such arduous duty. He captured our sympathy at once, Union and Confederate ex-soldiers alike, and for the fraternal, soldierly feeling we gave way, and consented to his plan, thereby doing him and ourselves an injustice, and adding more horrors to our Forlorn Hope.
The soldiers detailed, and were placed in charge of a mulatto sergeant, and they, together with a boy, a citizen of Boston, Mass., who was on a visit to Fort Concho and who had accompanied Nolan, filed out toward the Laguna Plata, taking a northeast course.