He closed his eyes as if tired out with the effort. Sid and Scotty went to their tent, where lay Niltci. On being told that they were going to leave for a long trip, the Indian boy insisted on having a browse bed made for him under the Colonel’s shelter, where he could attend to him. A shy and childlike adoration for the old army officer seemed to have grown up in the Navaho lad; there was nothing he could do that would repay the debt he felt he owed the Colonel for saving him from the fanaticism of his own kinsfolk. This feeling he managed to convey in expressive sign language, accompanied by what few English words he knew. So, while Big John mended horse gear and got the outfits together, the boys spent the evening in making Niltci a pair of rude crutches and moving him out where he and the Colonel could run their own hospital together.
Next morning the boys turned out, to find the Colonel and Big John talking earnestly in low tones together. Sid knew from their serious faces what they were discussing—water. The boys hovered around to listen, for both men were old desert campaigners and a long experience backed their words.
“You can’t make time and take any of the pack animals, John,” the Colonel was saying. “Yet that water hole may be dry, or all green scum not fit to drink, at this time of the year. Ten gallons a day is the very least the horses can make out on. If you fill up at that tank you can push along and reach Canyon Cheyo by evening of the second day. I have only two water bags. Five gallons each. You’ll have to sling them to Scotty’s saddle bags, for he is the lightest. You can carry two quart canteens each, using all our spare ones. See that they are well-corked, for they will be half rations at the best. No use striking for the San Juan. It is really as far up there as over the desert to Red Valley.”
“You leave it to me, Colonel,” broke in Big John, emphatically. “I don’t want no pack horse totin’ water. I’ll rig them bags, an’ we’ll roll our freight outer here an’ squeeze the dern water out of that desert if we have to!”
The boys made up their own rolls and saddle bags with a sense of the seriousness of their undertaking. To cross that desert without either packing or wagoning an ample supply of water was no joke. If all went well and they kept a good pace, they could make what water they could carry do. If stopped anywhere, any way, by a sandstorm, for instance—it made them thirsty just to think of it!
As they filed out of camp Scotty rode the Colonel’s big roan, for he could easily carry the boy’s weight and the extra eighty pounds of water in the canvas bags. The rest of the party were loaded up with bags of oats in addition to their own outfits.
At the ferry the old-timers shook their heads when the water bags and canteens were filled for their dash. It couldn’t be done—that was certain as death! But there was too much at stake to turn back. They alone could solve Major Hinchman’s Indian troubles, and they weren’t going back on the Colonel’s old army chum, no matter what the risk.
Once across the Colorado the horses cantered off briskly, snorting and whickering with good spirits. They had been filled up with all the water they could hold and it was yet early morning, keen and cool. The steep climb up the red buttes that led over the divide to the flat country north of the mesas began. Then came sand, valleys and valleys of it, with scant vegetation, dry, arid and desolate. That loose sand was particularly hard on the dogs. Lee had been left behind in camp, for he was too long-coupled to have the needful endurance, but Pepper and Bourbon, they had felt, would be worth taking. Ruler seemed made of iron, as he rambled right along through it. He evidently appreciated his responsibilities, for if either Pepper or Bourbon attempted to lag he was behind them with ready snarl and snapping teeth that drove them flying onward. At noon the party halted and doled out their first water. It worried the boys to see how greedily the horses sucked down their allotments of half a canvas pail each and then whickered and bit for more. The dogs nearly came to a fight over theirs, and each had to be held by his collar to prevent him from flying at the drinking one.
By evening the horses had slowed to an exasperating walk and the dogs limped painfully. Down into a hideous gulch Big John led the party. It was out of the wind, but dry as the Sahara. Here they made their first dry camp. The first water bag had gone flat and the second was already alarmingly lean. Sid shook his canteen. There was but a drop or two in the one on the off hook, and again he felt the cork of the other to make sure that it had not come out. He had gotten through the day on schedule. They were all right, provided——
That night he woke up with the cold. That was unusual, in itself, for that bag was good down to below freezing. Sid uncovered the flap and looked out. The stars were obscured, and a steady stinging sift, sift, sift of sand went on all around him. He could hear that faint, continuous hiss and ticking, and, attempting to move in his bag he was surprised to note it heavy as lead and immovable.