“Don’t! talk so, Mars Tom—it sk’yers me to hear you. It’s so hot, en you’s so thirsty, dat you ain’t in yo’ right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don’t she look good! ’clah I doan’ know how I’s gwine to wait tell we gits dah, I’s so thirsty.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait; and it won’t do you no good, either, because there ain’t no lake there, I tell you.”
I says:
“Jim, don’t you take your eye off of it, and I won’t, either.”
“’Deed I won’t; en bless you, honey, I couldn’t ef I wanted to.”
We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it—and all of a sudden it was gone again! Jim staggered, and ’most fell down. When he got his breath he says, gasping like a fish:
“Mars Tom, hit’s a ghos’, dat’s what it is, en I hopes to goodness we ain’t gwine to see it no mo’. Dey’s been a lake, en suthin’s happened, en de lake’s dead, en we’s seen its ghos’; we’s seen it twiste, en dat’s proof. De desert’s ha’nted, it’s ha’nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le’ ’s git outen it; I’d ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag’in en de ghos’ er dat lake come a-mournin’ aroun’ us en we asleep en doan’ know de danger we’s in.”
“Ghost, you gander! It ain’t anything but air and heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person’s imagination. If I—gimme the glass!”
He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.
“It’s a flock of birds,” he says. “It’s getting toward sundown, and they’re making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean business—maybe they’re going for food or water, or both. Let her go to starboard!—Port your hellum! Hard down! There—ease up—steady, as you go.”