Instead of keeping on down the valley as I had at first intended to do, I crossed it and ascended the eastern slope to the mesa or plateau, upon coming to the top of which I stopped and scanned the country over, hoping to see a smoke. For on these mornings when the landscape is covered with snow and the air is frosty, smoke can be seen a long way off. But nothing of the kind was visible.
I continued on in a northeasterly direction, aiming to strike the edge of the river-bottom again, and determined now to stick to it when once there, unless I saw a sure-enough camp away from it. The real pangs of hunger had left me, but weakness was creeping on. The old elastic step was gone. The snow was five inches deep. The sun was shining so brightly that my eyes were burning.
Thanks to the wolves, I still had one of the charred sticks in my hands. I pinched off flakes of charcoal with my finger-nails and blackened my cheeks under my eyes. And was it providential that I escaped snow-blindness?
Right here I wish to stop this narrative long enough to say that I will put the Panhandle of Texas against any other 180 miles square of territory in America for spasmodic, erratic weather. Before the sun reached the meridian it was very warm. Not a breath of air seemed to stir. The snow melted rapidly, and before the middle of the afternoon it was a veritable slush; and I slowly spattered through it.
About 3 P. M., as I passed through a gap that separated quite a flat-top from the main plateau I saw, first opposite a bend in the river and off to my left, and fully a mile or more out from the river and on the north side, I being on the south side, what I at first took to be tents. Yes. I was sure I saw tents. That meant to me soldiers and full rations.
Then I felt hungry! Oh, so hungry! The sight seemed to stimulate me, and I moved on down the river until I came opposite the same objects, but they now looked altogether different. I could not make out what I had first seen; but I did see in the north and west a dark-blue cloud near the horizon, rapidly rising.
Here the bluff came down close to the river, dropping down in benches with a narrow sandy bottom. I went down near the river to where there was a rack-heap or pile of driftwood; and, evening coming on, I selected a place between two sand ridges and built a fire. Where I built it it was not more than fifty feet from the water's edge, which was very shallow, just barely a thin sheet of water, the channel running against the north bank. After I had gotten the fire to burning good, I went back up on the bench of land, to where I could see over to the objects that had attracted my attention so much, and just as the sun was disappearing behind the hills the blue cloud had settled back. Not definitely making out what any of the objects were, I went back to the fire.
Just then I heard the sound, as if it were an ax, in the direction I had been looking. It was repeated several times, and then all was silence. Soon it began to turn very cold, and by morning had frozen the river, in the shallow places along the bars. There was no grass where I built the fire. I had made it in a basin between two sand ridges; and when it had burned to a bed of coals I took the end-gate of a wagon, which I found in the driftwood, and separated the coals to right and left, to some little distance from the fire-bed. Then I built two fires and stretched myself out in the original warm fire-bed between the two fires. I was resting, but could not sleep for hours,—or so it seemed to me. I kept turning from side to side, at first on account of the heat in the sand under me; then I would get up from time to time and replenish the fires.
Finally I fell into a dreamy slumber, from which I would suddenly arouse, and at one time in the night, when I became thoroughly awakened, I was fully five rods from the fire. This gave me much concern. I had dreamed that some one wanted my bed and had driven me away from it, and I must have left my bed while I was asleep.
Here I uttered the first word I had heard since leaving the camp of the Mexicans. "No," I said; "I am here alone."