Chapter Eleven.
The “Journey of Death.”
In two hours we reached the crossing at Fra Cristobal. Here the road parts from the river, and strikes into the waterless desert. We plunge through the shallow ford, coming out on the eastern bank. We fill our “xuages” with care, and give our animals as much as they will drink. After a short halt to refresh ourselves, we ride onward.
We have not travelled far before we recognise the appropriate name of this terrible journey. Scattered along the path we see the bones of many animals. There are human bones too! That white spheroidal mass, with its grinning rows and serrated sutures, that is a human skull. It lies beside the skeleton of a horse. Horse and rider have fallen together. The wolves have stripped them at the same time. They have dropped down on their thirsty track, and perished in despair, although water, had they known it, was within reach of another effort!
We see the skeleton of a mule, with the alpareja still buckled around it, and an old blanket, flapped and tossed by many a whistling wind.
Other objects, that have been brought there by human aid, strike the eye as we proceed. A bruised canteen, the fragments of a glass bottle, an old hat, a piece of saddle-cloth, a stirrup red with rust, a broken strap, with many like symbols, are strewn along our path, speaking a melancholy language.
We are still only on the border of the desert. We are fresh. How when we have travelled over and neared the opposite side? Shall we leave such souvenirs?
We are filled with painful forebodings, as we look across the arid waste that stretches indefinitely before us. We do not dread the Apache. Nature herself is the enemy we fear.