As the sun finally rose behind us, the faintest adumbration of the nearest ridges of the Sierras was discerned, in a dim, blue scroll across the western horizon, far ahead—how far it was useless to guess; and later, patches of snow about the peaks.
The minutes were as hours; and their passing tantalized us: noting how the dim view grew so very slowly into hazy outlines of mountains, and finally of tree-tops.
On we labored, overcoming distance inch by inch; nodding in our saddles; occasionally dismounting, to shake off the almost overpowering grasp of sleep.
Half awake, we dreamed of water, green trees, and fragrant flowers. Rising hope, anon, took the place of long-deferred fruition, and we forgot for a moment how hard the pull was; till, with returning consciousness of thirst and painful drowsiness, we saw the landscape ahead presented still another, and another line of sand-dunes yet to be overcome.
Luke and I reached the Truckee at nine o'clock in the forenoon, just ahead of the vanguard of cattle, and about three miles in advance of the foremost wagon.
We tried to regulate the cattle's consumption of water, but did not prevent their drinking all they could hold. Ten men, on ten mules, could not have stopped one cow from plunging into that river, once she got sight of it, and remaining as long as she desired. We could not even prevent the mules we rode from rushing into it—that cold, rippling Truckee. Yet our elders had sent us two boys to hold back a hundred cattle, and make them drink in installments—in homeopathic doses, for their stomachs' sake.
They dashed into the stream en masse; and seeing the futility of interfering, we gladly joined the cattle, in the first good, long, cool swallow of clear, clean water, within a period of six weeks.
Our little mules did not stop till they reached the middle of the river, and stuck their heads, ears and all, under the water. Luke's diminutive, snuff-colored beast was so overcome by the sight and feel of water that she lay down in it, with him astride, giving herself and her master the first real bath since the time that she did the same thing, in the Platte River, some three months previously.
To us, the long-time sun-dried, thirsty emigrants; covered from head to foot with dust from the Black Hills, overlaid with alkali powder from the Humboldt, veneered with ashes of the desert; all ingrained by weeks of dermatic absorption, rubbed in by the wear of travel, polished by the friction of the wind—to us said the Truckee, flowing a hundred feet wide, transparent, deep, cool; rattling and singing and splashing over the rocks; and the sparkle of its crystal purity, the music of its flow and the joy of its song, repeated, "Come and take a drink."
We filled our canteens and went back to meet the others. We found them in a line three miles long; and it was well into the afternoon when the last wagon reached the river.