/> longer pink. Whenever a stream was reached, mother searched patiently

for clear water and an untrampled bit of bank where she might do the

family washing, leaving Ezra to mind the children. But even so the crust

and the wear and tear of travel remained to harass her fastidious soul.



Buddy remembered that drive as he could not remember the comfortable

ranch house of his earlier babyhood. To him afterward it seemed that

life began with the great herd of cattle. He came to know just how low

the sun must slide from the top of the sky before the "point" would

spread out with noses to the ground, pausing wherever a mouthful of

grass was to be found. When these leaders of the herd stopped, the

cattle would scatter and begin feeding. If there was water they would

crowd the banks of the stream or pool, pushing and prodding one another

with their great, sharp horns. Later, when the sun was gone and dusk

crept out of nowhere, the cowboys would ride slowly around the herd,

pushing it quietly into a smaller compass. Then, if Buddy were not too

sleepy, he would watch the cattle lie down to chew their cuds in deep,

sighing content until they slept. It reminded Buddy vaguely of when

mother popped corn in a wire popper, a long time ago-before they all

lived in a wagon and went with the herd. First one and two-then there

would be three, four, five, as many as Buddy could count-then the whole

herd would be lying down.



Buddy loved the camp-fires. The cowboys would sit around the one where

his father and mother sat--mother with Dulcie in her arms--and they

would smoke and tell stories, until mother told him it was time little

boys were in bed. Buddy always wanted to know what they said after he

had climbed into the big wagon where mother had made a bed, but he never

found out. He could remember lying there listening sometimes to the

niggers singing at their own campfire within call, Ezra always singing

the loudest,--just as a bull always could be heard above the bellowing

of the herd.



All his life, Ezra's singing and the monotonous bellowing of a herd

reminded Buddy of one mysteriously terrible time when there weren't

any rivers or any ponds or anything along the trail, and they had to be

careful of the water and save it, and he and Dulcie were not asked

to wash their faces. I think that miracle helped to fix the incident

indelibly in Buddy's mind; that, and the bellowing of the cattle. It

seemed a month to Buddy, but as he grew older he learned that it was

three days they went without water.



The first day he did not remember especially, except that mother had

talked about clean aprons that night, and failed to produce any. The

second he recalled quite clearly. Father came to the wagons sometime in

the night to see if mother was asleep. Their murmured talk wakened Buddy

and he heard father say:



"We'll hold 'em, all right, Lassie. And there's water ahead. It's marked

on the trail map. Don't you worry--I'll stay up and help the boys. The

cattle are uneasy--but we'll hold 'em."



The third day Buddy never forgot. That was the day when mother forgot

that Q stands for Quagga, and permitted Buddy to call it P, just for

fun, because it looked so much like P. And when he said "W is water ",

mother made a funny sound and said right out loud, "Oh God, please!" and

told Buddy to creep back and play with Sister--when Sister was asleep,

and there were still x, y and z to say, let alone that mysterious

And-so-forth which seemed to mean so much and so little and never was

called upon to help spell a word. Never since he began to have lessons

had mother omitted a single letter or cut the study hour down the

teeniest little bit.



Buddy was afraid of something, but he could not think what it was that

frightened him. He began to think seriously about water, and to listen

uneasily to the constant lowing of the herd. The increased shouting

of the niggers driving the lagging ones held a sudden significance. It

occurred to him that the niggers had their hands full, and that they had

never driven so big a "Drag." It was hotter than ever, too, and they had

twice stopped to yoke in fresh oxen. Ezra had boasted all along that

ole Bawley would keep his end up till they got clah to Wyoming. But ole

Bawley had stopped, and stopped, and at last had to be taken out of the

yoke. Buddy began to wish they would hurry up and find a river.



None of the cowboys would take him on the saddle and let him ride, that

day. They looked harassed--Buddy called it cross--when they rode up to

the wagon to give their horses a few mouthfuls of water from the barrel.

Step-and-a-Half couldn't spare any more, they told mother. He had

declared at noon that he needed every drop he had for the cooking, and

there would be no washing of dishes whatever. Later, mother had studied

a map and afterwards had sat for a long while staring out over the backs

of the cattle, her face white. Buddy thought perhaps mother was sick.



That day lasted hours and hours longer than any other day that Buddy

could remember. His father looked cross, too, when he rode back to them.

Once it was to look at the map which mother had studied. They talked

together afterwards, and Buddy heard his father say that she must not

worry; the cattle had good bottom, and could stand thirst better than a

poor herd, and another dry camp would not really hurt anyone.



He had uncovered the water barrel and looked in, and had ridden straight

over to the chuck-wagon, his horse walking alongside the high seat where

Step-and-a-Half sat perched listlessly with a long-lashed oxwhip in his

hand. Father had talked for a few minutes, and had ridden back scowling.



"That old scoundrel has got two ten-gallon kegs that haven't been

touched!" he told mother. "Yo' all mustn't water any more horses out of

your barrel Send the boys to Step-and-a-Half. Yo' all keep what you've

got. The horses have got to have water--to-night it's going to be hell

to hold the herd, and if anybody goes thirsty it'll be the men, not the

horses But yo' all send them to the other wagon, Lassie Mind, now! Not a

drop to anyone."



After father rode away, Buddy crept up and put his two short arms around

mother. "Don't cry. I don't have to drink any water," he soothed her. He

waited a minute and added optimistically, "Dere's a BI--IG wiver comin'

pitty soon. Oxes smells water a hunerd miles. Ezra says so. An' las'

night Crumpy was snuffin' an' snuffin'. I saw 'im do it. He smelt a BIG

wiver. THAT bi-ig!" He spread his short arms as wide apart as they would

reach, and smiled tremulously.



Mother squeezed Buddy so hard that he grunted.



"Dear little man, of course there is. WE don't mind, do we? I-was

feeling sorry for the poor cattle."



"De're firsty," Buddy stated solemnly, his eyes big. "De're bawlin' fer

a drink of water. I guess de're AWFUL firsty. Dere's a big wiver comin'

now Crumpy smelt a big wiver."



Buddy's mother stared across the arid plain parched into greater

barrenness by the heat that had been unremitting for the past week.

Buddy's faith in the big river she could not share. Somehow they had

drifted off the trail marked on the map drawn by George Williams.



Williams had warned them to carry as much water as possible in barrels,

as a precaution against suffering if they failed to strike water each

night. He had told them that water was scarce, but that his cowboy

scouts and the deep-worn buffalo trails had been able to bring him

through with water at every camp save two or three. The Staked Plains,

he said, would be the hardest drive. And this was the Staked Plains--and

it was hard driving!



Buddy did not know all that until afterwards, when he heard father talk

of the drive north. But he would have remembered that day and the night

that followed, even though he had never heard a word about it.

The bawling of the herd became a doleful chant of misery. Even the

phlegmatic oxen that drew the wagons bawled and slavered while they

strained forward, twisting their heads under the heavy yokes. They

stopped oftener than usual to rest, and when Buddy was permitted to walk

with the perspiring Ezra by the leaders, he wondered why the oxen's eyes

were red, like Dulcie's when she had one of her crying spells.



At night the cowboys did not tie their horses and sit down while they

ate, but stood by their mounts and bolted food hurriedly, one eye always

on the restless cattle, that walked around and around, and would neither

eat nor lie down, but lowed incessantly. Once a few animals came close

enough to smell the water in a bucket where Frank Davis was watering

his sweat-streaked horse, and Step-and-a-Half's wagon was almost upset

before the maddened cattle could be driven back to the main herd.



"No use camping," Bob Birnie told the boys gathered around

Step-and-a-Half's Dutch ovens. "The cattle won't stand. We'll wear

ourselves and them out trying to hold 'em-they may as well be hunting

water as running in circles. Step-and-a-Half, keep your cooked grub

handy for the boys, and yo' all pack up and pull out. We'll turn the

cattle loose and follow. If there's any water in this damned country

they'll find it."



Years afterwards, Buddy learned that his father had sent men out to

hunt water, and that they had not found any. He was ten when this was

discussed around a spring roundup fire, and he had studied the matter

for a few minutes and then had spoken boldly his mind.



"You oughta kept your horses as thirsty as the cattle was, and I bet

they'd a' found that water," he criticized, and was sent to bed for his

tactlessness. Bob Birnie himself had thought of that afterwards, and had

excused the oversight by saying that he had depended on the map, and had

not foreseen a three-day dry drive.



However that may be, that night was a night of panicky desperation.

Ezra walked beside the oxen and shouted and swung his lash, and the

oxen strained forward bellowing so that not even Dulcie could sleep,

but whimpered fretfully in her mother's arms. Buddy sat up wide-eyed and

watched for the big river, and tried not to be a 'fraid-cat and cry like

Dulcie.



It was long past starry midnight when a little wind puffed out of the

darkness and the oxen threw up their heads and sniffed, and put a new

note into their "M-baw-aw-aw-mm!" They swung sharply so that the wind

blew straight into the front of the wagon, which lurched forward with a

new impetus.



"Glo-ory t' Gawd, Missy! dey smells watah, sho 's yo' bawn!" sobbed Ezra

as he broke into a trot beside the wheelers. "'Tain't fur--lookit dat-ah

huhd a-goin' it! No 'm, Missy, DEY ain't woah out--dey smellin' watah

an' dey'm gittin' TO it! 'Tain't fur, Missy."



Buddy clung to the back of the seat and stared round-eyed into the

gloom. He never forgot that lumpy shadow which was the herd, traveling

fast in dust that obscured the nearest stars. The shadow humped here

and there as the cattle crowded forward at a shuffling half trot, the

click--awash of their shambling feet treading close on one another. The

rapping tattoo of wide-spread horns clashing against wide-spread horns

filled him with a formless terror, so that he let go the seat to clutch

at mother's dress. He was not afraid of cattle-they were as much a

part of his world as were Ezra and the wagon and the camp-fires-but he

trembled with the dread which no man could name for him.



These were not the normal, everyday sounds of the herd. The herd had

somehow changed from plodding animals to one overwhelming purpose that

would sweep away anything that came in its path. Two thousand parched

throats and dust-dry tongues-and suddenly the smell of water that would

go gurgling down two thousand eager gullets, and every intervening

second a cursed delay against which the cattle surged blindly. It was

the mob spirit, when the mob was fighting for its very existence.



Over the bellowing of the cattle a yelling cowboy now and then made

himself heard. The four oxen straining under their yokes broke into

a lumbering gallop lest they be outdistanced by the herd, and Dulcie

screamed when the wagon lurched across a dry wash and almost upset,

while Ezra plied the ox-whip and yelled frantically at first one ox and

then another, inventing names for the new ones. Buddy drew in his breath

and held it until the wagon rolled on four wheels instead of two, but he

did not scream.



Still the big river did not come. It seemed to Buddy that the cattle

would never stop running. Tangled in the terror was Ezra's shouting

as he ran alongside the wagon and called to Missy that it was "Dat ole

Crumpy actin' the fool", and that the wagon wouldn't upset. "No'm, dey's

jest in a hurry to git dere fool haids sunk to de eyes in dat watah. Dey

ain't aimin' to run away--no'm, dish yer ain't no stampede!"



Perhaps Buddy dozed. The next thing he remembered, day was breaking,

with the sun all red, seen through the dust. The herd was still going,

but now it was running and somehow the yoked oxen were keeping close

behind, lumbering along with heads held low and the sweat reeking from

their spent bodies. Buddy heard dimly his mother's sharp command to

Ezra:



"Stand back, Ezra! We're not going to be caught in that terrible trap.

They're piling over the bank ahead of us. Get away from the leaders. I

am going to shoot."



Buddy crawled up a little higher on the blankets behind the seat, and

saw mother steady herself and aim the rifle straight at Crumpy. There

was the familiar, deafening roar, the acrid smell of black powder smoke,

and Crumpy went down loosely, his nose rooting the trampled ground for

a space before the gun belched black smoke again and Crumpy's yoke-mate

pitched forward. The wagon stopped so abruptly that Buddy sprawled

helplessly on his back like an overturned beetle.



He saw mother stand looking down at the wheelers, that backed and

twisted their necks under their yokes. Her lips were set firmly

together, and her eyes were bright with purple hollows beneath. She held

the rifle for a moment, then set the butt of it on the "jockey box" just

in front of the dashboard. The wheelers, helpless between the weight of

the wagon behind and the dead oxen in front, might twist their necks off

but they could do no damage.



"Unyoke the wheelers, Ezra, and let the poor creatures have their chance

at the water," she cried sharply, and Ezra, dodging the horns of the

frantic brutes, made shift to obey.



Fairly on the bank of the sluggish stream with its flood-worn channel

and its treacherous patches of quicksand, the wagon thus halted by the

sheer nerve and quick-thinking of mother became a very small island in a

troubled sea of weltering backs and tossing horns and staring eyeballs.

Riders shouted and lashed unavailingly with their quirts, trying to

hold back the full bulk of the herd until the foremost had slaked

their thirst and gone on. But the herd was crazy for the water, and

the foremost were plunged headlong into the soft mud where they mired,

trampled under the hoofs of those who came crowding from behind.



Someone shouted, close to the wagon yet down the bank at the edge of the

water. The words were indistinguishable, but a warning was in the voice.

On the echo of that cry, a man screamed twice.



"Ezra!" cried mother fiercely. "It's Frank Davis--they've got him down,

somehow. Climb over the backs of the cattle--There's no other way--and

GET HIM!"



"Yas'm, Missy!" Ezra called back, and then Buddy saw him go over the

herd, scrambling, jumping from back to back.



Buddy remembered that always, and the funeral they had later in the day,

when the herd was again just trail-weary cattle feeding hungrily on the

scanty grass. Down at the edge of the creek the carcasses of many dead

animals lay half-buried in the mud. Up on a little knoll where a few

stunted trees grew, the negroes dug a long, deep hole. Mother's eyes

were often filled with tears that day, and the cowboys scarcely talked

at all when they gathered at the chuckwagon.



After a while they all went to the hole which the negroes had dug, and

there was a long Something wrapped up in canvas. Mother wore her best

dress which was black, and father and all the boys had shaved their

faces and looked very sober. The negroes stood back in a group by

themselves, and every few minutes Buddy saw them draw their tattered

shirtsleeves across their faces. And father--Buddy looked once and saw

two tears running down father's cheeks. Buddy was shocked into a stony

calm. He had never dreamed that fathers ever cried.



Mother read out of her Bible, and all the boys held their hats in front

of them, with their hands clasped, and looked at the ground while she

read. Then mother sang. She sang, "We shall meet beyond the river",

which Buddy thought was a very queer song, because they were all there

but Frank Davis; then she sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Buddy sang

too, piping the notes accurately, with a vague pronunciation of the

words and a feeling that somehow he was helping mother.



After that they put the long, canvas-wrapped Something down in the hole,

and mother said "Our Father Who Art in Heaven ", with Buddy repeating it

uncertainly after her and pausing to say "TRETHpatheth" very carefully.

Then mother picked up Dulcie in her arms, took Buddy by the hand and

walked slowly back to the wagon, and would not let him turn to see what

the boys were doing.



It was from that day that Buddy missed Frank Davis, who had mysteriously

gone to Heaven, according to mother. Buddy's interest in Heaven was

extremely keen for a time, and he asked questions which not even mother

could answer. Then his memory of Frank Davis blurred. But never his

memory of that terrible time when the Tomahawk outfit lost five hundred

cattle in the dry drive and the stampede for water.