Soon it began to thunder in the southwest. The lightning was flashing in the south and west near the horizon. After I had gone some distance, it became quite dark. Fearing I would miss finding the men, I fired the carbine. I soon saw the flash and heard the report of a gun a half-mile or so to my left. Turning that way, I would fire now and again, and get an answer.
It was Rees and the three men, Rees walking and Emery riding Rees's horse. They were all burning with thirst; and soon the four men had drunk the contents of the canteens.
The deep rumbling, muttering thunder was now almost continuous. The sky was overcast with heavy black clouds. The vivid, forked lightning was "cavorting" high above the horizon. We necessarily moved very slowly between lightning intervals, on account of the inky darkness.
On top of the Casa bluff, at short intervals, a streak of blaze would go up thirty or forty feet high and fall back to the ground. "Soap-balls," said Squirrel-eye, who had been raised in Texas. And so they were. There was a soap-root growing profusely in all this region, with which the Mexicans washed their clothes. From the top of its stalk grew a round, fuzzy ball about four inches in diameter, which would ignite at the touch of a burning match. They were something like the turpentine balls, which the boys of my generation used to sport with on Fourth of July nights. And this lurid blaze could be seen for many miles at night.
When we got within speaking distance that well-known clarion voice of John Mathias told us with vim, to "follow up the draw." He added: "We've got a coon cook, and he has a supper ready of antelope, bread and coffee."
Mathias was a man whose countenance had but one expression. It never changed. He always looked as if dire misfortune had suddenly overtaken him. Yet withal he was the most affable, sociable, and humorous man in our company. He was always turning the sublime to the ridiculous. But when others were in distress he was tender-hearted. His help was free, and he was kind and generous. We had no sooner reached camp when his solicitation for the welfare of Harvey, Kress, Perry, and Williams cropped out.
The violent thunder had abated, and the air was perfectly still, when Mathias said: "Now, boys, after you all eat, let's all string out from here southwest toward where we left the boys, those in front with the canteens keeping within speaking distance of one another, and we will throw up burning soap-balls to signal them in if they are on the move."
Some of the men could not eat at all. Those who did, were not ravenously hungry. It was water, water, water, they wanted first. Leaving the darky soldier and Louie Keyes, whose vitality was at a low ebb, we all filed out on the yarner, and with two men holding the four corners of a blanket, to hold soap-balls in, dark though it was we gathered many a one, over a hundred, by shuffling and scuffling our feet along and around.
All the while we were busily gathering them, one man would light and toss the blazing ball as high as he could throw it, and in the light of a blazing ball as it was ascending and descending, we would see others and skip toward them by this light. We kept from one to as many as five soap-balls in the air at once. These brightly burning blazing balls were fine night signals.
Loud thunder and bright lightning could be heard and seen, then continuous, deep roaring thunder like the sound of artillery which was not far distant, could be distinctly heard. Then to the south and southwest we heard a deafening and I may say an appalling roar that lasted, it seemed, for at least three minutes. The sound was like the rushing of a mighty torrent.