FullReads

“How?”

“Leave your wagon, Jim; it’s the heaviest. Put your team on here.”

“But my wagon is all I’ve got in the world!” cried the other, “and we’ve got near a keg of water yet! We can make it! The oxen are pulling all right!”

His companion turned away with a shrug, then thought better of it and turned back.

“We’ve thrown out all we owned except bare necessities,” he explained, patiently. “Your wagon is too heavy. The time to change is while the beasts can still pull.”

“But I refuse!” cried the other. “I won’t do it. Go ahead with your wagon. I’ll get mine in, John Gates, you can’t bulldoze me.”

Gates stared him in the eye.

“Get the pail,” he requested, mildly.

He drew water from one of the kegs slung underneath the wagon’s body. The oxen, smelling it, strained weakly, bellowing. Gates slowly and carefully swabbed out their mouths, permitted them each a few swallows, rubbed them pityingly between the horns. Then he proceeded to unyoke the four beasts from the other man’s wagon and yoked them to his own. Jim started to say something. Gates faced him. Nothing was said.

“Get your kit,” Gates commanded, briefly, after a few moments. He parted the hanging canvas and looked into the wagon. Built to transport much freight it was nearly empty. A young woman lay on a bed spread along the wagon bottom. She seemed very weak.

“All right, honey?” asked Gates, gently.

She stirred, and achieved a faint smile.

“It’s terribly hot. The sun strikes through,” she replied. “Can’t we let some air in?”

“The dust would smother you.”

“Are we nearly there?”

“Getting on farther every minute,” he replied, cheerfully.

Again the smothering alkali rose and the dust cloud crawled.

Four hours later the traveller called Jim collapsed face downward. The oxen stopped. Gates lifted the man by the shoulders. So exhausted was he that he had not the strength nor energy to spit forth the alkali with which his fall had caked his open mouth. Gates had recourse to the water keg. After a little he hoisted his companion to the front seat.

At intervals thereafter the lone human figure spoke the single word that brought his team to an instantaneous dead stop. His first care was then the woman, next the man clinging to the front seat, then the oxen. Before starting he clambered to the top of the wagon and cast a long, calculating look across the desolation ahead. Twice he even further reduced the meagre contents of the wagon, appraising each article long and doubtfully before discarding it. About mid-afternoon he said abruptly:

“Jim, you’ve got to walk.”

The man demurred weakly, with a touch of panic.

“Every ounce counts. It’s going to be a close shave. You can hang on to the tail of the wagon.”

Yet an hour later Jim, for the fourth time, fell face downward, but now did not rise. Gates, going to him, laid his hand on his head, pushed back one of his eyelids, then knelt for a full half minute, staring straight ahead. Once he made a tentative motion toward the nearly empty water keg, once he started to raise the man’s shoulders. The movements were inhibited. A brief agony cracked the mask of alkali on his countenance. Then stolidly, wearily, he arose. The wagon lurched forward. After it had gone a hundred yards and was well under way in its painful forward crawl, Gates, his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes fixed and glazed, drew the revolver from its holster and went back.

At sundown he began to use the gad. The oxen were trying to lie down. If one of them succeeded, it would never again arise. Gates knew this. He plied the long, heavy whip in both hands. Where the lash fell it bit out strips of hide. It was characteristic of the man that though heretofore he had not in all this day inflicted a single blow on the suffering animals, though his nostrils widened and his terrible red eyes looked for pity toward the skies, yet now he swung mercilessly with all his strength.