Not a living thing could we see beyond our caravan. No jack-rabbits ventured into the desert; no more would a water-spaniel breast a scalding sea. The only living thing we met with in that gigantic kiln was a horned toad, which was existing as a hermit and was apparently content. We captured it, and Coonskin named it Job, because the horns which covered it looked like the extinct craters of once boiling boils. Our water was vanishing so rapidly by noon that I decided not to tarry for lunch and rest, but to hasten to the spring; but at five, when the sun was nearer the horizon and evaporation less, I ordered a dry camp, and the donkeys were unpacked and grained with the last of the barley generously presented by St. Joer. We men lunched on cold meat and crackers and canned fruit, and sparing draughts of warm water; after which we reclined and smoked until the sun set. Then we repacked before darkness set in to confuse us. How the donkeys did enjoy rolling in the alkali! When they had finished their dry ablutions they looked like negroes who had been hit with a bag of flour.
Just before resuming the march, we men poured a few drops of citric acid into our two quart canteens, whose tepid water was only an aggravation of our thirst; the acid made it palatable. Soon afterward I discovered our great error. The acid so worked on the tin that the water became, in time, unfit to drink; fearing lest it would poison us, we both had to throw the precious liquid away.
About mid-way that afternoon I saw my first mirage. It was simply magnificent, wonderful! A snow-crowned mountain rose out of the desert, and on top of it, turned bottom-side up, rested its counterpart, both phantom peaks remaining a while immovable; then they appeared to crush into each other and dissolve. The spectacle was bewildering. Like mammoth icebergs in a glistening sea, they seemed to melt and leave on the arid waste a great lake of crystal water. At sundown they reappeared with still grander effect.
The sun threw a crimson, fiery mantle over the under mountain, which produced the effect of flowing lava down its snow-white slope to a flame-red lake on the desert, while above, on the upper mountain, reflected and danced shadows of rose-color and pink, as if reflected from flames within the crater of a volcano underneath. Then, as the sun sank below the horizon, the upper mountain gradually rose toward the zenith and opened wider, like a great fan, tinted with all the colors of a rainbow, until it faded into radiating webs of gossamer, and disappeared.
One other time we saw plainly the skeletons of a man and a horse glistening several hundred feet from the trail, but I was too incredulous to put faith in the old proverb, "Seeing is believing," and passed on. Just before dark the huge Granite Mountain looked to be only a couple of miles away. Still we traveled till midnight before we passed the edge of the dusky pile, so deceiving are distances in that rarified air.
The evening in that cooling oven of baked sand and alkali was oppressively long, dull and wearisome. Every trail branching toward Granite Mountain had to be checked off my diagram, for we had seen no sign-board. True, the heavens lent a little cheer with their sparkling lights, but the temperature fell from far above the 100 degree mark to 70 degrees by eight o'clock, and to 48 degrees before we pitched camp. We had passed three trails not on the diagram, and I began nervously to speculate whether the sign-board had been taken by some overland voyager for fuel and we had passed the trail to Fedora Spring.
The clock pointed to one. A few moments later a well-beaten trail curved southward toward the towering pyramid of rock. I called a halt to reason with my man on the advisability of following it.
"We'll chance it," I said; and we trailed toward the mountain. Narrower, rockier and steeper grew the trail for two miles, before I discerned the sloping sides of the canyon we were in, when I ordered camp. The donkeys were securely picketed to the roots of giant sage with our longest ropes, to enable them to find sleeping places among the rocks; I knew they must be very thirsty, and would try to break away in search of water. Then we made our bed in the trail, and with lantern went to find the spring; but we searched in vain and returned to our camp-fire discouraged. Evidently we had taken a wood-trail into a dry canyon.
Only half a two-quart canteen of water was left us. We ate a cold lunch, and drank sparingly; after which I took charge of the canteen for the night. Coonskin remonstrated at once, saying he was thirsty. I said I was, too, and that when I should drink, he could, but not otherwise. We were in desperate circumstances, and I must exercise my authority. So we crawled into our blankets, on the hard and narrow trail under the glittering canopy of heaven, and were soon asleep. But, before lying down, with a realizing sense that we were lost and without the water to keep us alive half the distance either to Skull Valley or to Redding Springs, I knelt in fervent prayer to God to guide us out of that awful wilderness to water in time to save us from the death that seemed to be in store for us on the morrow. The beaming planets, also voyagers on a limitless sea of mystery and doubt, looked down, cold and unsympathetic. Coonskin was first asleep; when I was sure, by his breathing, I quietly rose and gave my faithful dog a few drops of water in the wash basin. He was grateful indeed, and tried to be content; he seemed to realize the situation, and licking my cheek, lay down close to my side.
The sun shone over the walls of the canyon and awoke us frightfully late. We stretched and yawned. Now, I thought, if I had only taken Mac's suggestion to lay in a store of carrots and turnips, the water in the vegetables would have sufficed in emergency, and the donkeys had feed.