Chapter XVIII - Page 2

on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.

The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the
perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a
sign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed before it gets
there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a
merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a
living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank
level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a
sound--not a sigh--not a whisper--not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or
distant pipe of bird--not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless
people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting
mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness,
not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more
lonesome and forsaken than before.

The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make
at stated intervals a "spurt," and drag the coach a hundred or may be two
hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back,
enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem
afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-
champing. Then another "spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest at
the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules
and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours,
which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert.
It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so
hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the
day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and
the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel
deliberation! It was so trying to give one's watch a good long
undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling
away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut
through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate
membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding--and truly and
seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the
desert trip nothing but a harsh reality--a thirsty, sweltering, longing,
hateful reality!

Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours--that was what we
accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a
snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles
an hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert,
we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because
we never could have found language to tell how glad we