THE DROUGHT
For a year the shadowy clouds had flitted past Hidden Water, drifting
like flocks of snowy birds to their resting-place against the Peaks,
and as the wind raged and the darkness gathered the cattle had raised
their heads and bellowed, sniffing the wet air. In Summer the
thunder-heads had mounted to high heaven and spread from east to west;
the heat lightning had played along the horizon at night, restless and
incessant; the sky had turned black and the south wind had rushed up,
laden with the smell of distant showers. At last the rain had fallen,
graciously, bringing up grass and browse, and flowers for those who
sought them. But all the time the water lay in black pools along the
shrunken river, trickling among the rocks and eddying around huge
snags of driftwood, clear, limpid, sparkling, yet always less and
less.
Where the winter floods had scoured the lowlands clear, a fuzz of baby
trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly
beneath the sun. Along the river's edge little shreds of watercress
took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought
forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the
shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon
lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the
water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat sprang up
on the mesas, the myriad grass-seeds germinated and struggled forth,
sucking the last moisture from the earth to endow it with more seeds.
In springtime the deep-rooted mesquites and _palo verdes_ threw out
the golden halo of their flowers until the canyons were aflame; the
soggy _sahuaros_ drank a little at each sparse downpour and defied the
drought; all the world of desert plants flaunted their pigmented green
against the barren sky as if in grim contempt; but the little streams
ran weaker and weaker, creeping along under the sand to escape the
pitiless sun.
As Creede and Hardy rode out from Hidden Water, the earth lay dead
beneath their horses' feet--stark and naked, stripped to the rocks by
the sheep. Even on Bronco Mesa the ground was shorn of its covering;
the cloven hoofs of the sheep had passed over it like a scalping
knife, tearing off the last sun-blasted fringe of grass. In open
spaces where they had not found their way the gaunt cattle still
curled their hungry tongues beneath the bushes and fetched out spears
of grass, or licked the scanty Indian wheat from the earth itself.
With lips as tough and leathery as their indurated faces, the hardiest
of them worked their way into bunches of stick-cactus and _chollas_,
breaking down the guard of seemingly impenetrable spines and munching
on the juicy stalks; while along the ridges long-necked cows bobbed
for the high browse which the sheep had been unable to reach.
The famine was upon them; their hips stood out bony and unsightly
above their swollen stomachs as they racked across the benches, and
their eyes were wild and haggard. But to the eye of Creede, educated
by long experience, they were still strong and whole. The weaklings
were those that hung about the water, foot-sore from their long
journeyings to the distant hills and too weary to return. At the
spring-hole at Carrizo they found them gathered, the runts and roughs
of the range; old cows with importunate calves bunting at their
flaccid udders; young heifers, unused to rustling for two; _orehannas_
with no mothers to guide them to the feed; rough steers that had been
"busted" and half-crippled by some reckless cowboy--all the
unfortunate and incapable ones, standing dead-eyed and hopeless or
limping stiffly about.
A buzzard rose lazily from a carcass as they approached, and they
paused to note the brand. Then Creede shook his head bodingly and rode
into the bunch by the spring. At a single glance the _rodeo_ boss
recognized each one of them and knew from whence he came. He jumped
his horse at a wild steer and started him toward the ridges; the cows
with calves he rounded up more gently, turning them into the upper
trail; the _orehannas_, poor helpless orphans that they were, followed
hopefully, leaving one haggard-eyed old stag behind.
Creede looked the retreating band over critically and shook his head
again.
"Don't like it," he observed, briefly; and then, unlocking the
ponderous padlock that protected their cabin from hungry sheepmen, he
went in and fetched out the axe. "Guess I'll cut a tree for that old
stiff," he said.
From his stand by the long troughs where all the mountain cattle
watered in Summer, the disconsolate old stag watched the felling of
the tree curiously; then after an interval of dreary contemplation, he
racked his hide-bound skeleton over to the place and began to browse.
Presently the rocks began to clatter on the upper trail, and an old
cow that had been peering over the brow of the hill came back to get
her share. Even her little calf, whose life had been cast in thorny
ways, tried his new teeth on the tender ends and found them good. The
_orehannas_ drifted in one after the other, and other cows with
calves, and soon there was a little circle about the tree-top,
munching at the soft, brittle twigs.
"Well, that settles it," said Creede. "One of us stays here and cuts
brush, and the other works around Hidden Water. This ain't the first
drought I've been through, not by no means, and I've learned this
much: the Alamo can be dry as a bone and Carrizo, too, but they's
always water here and at the home ranch. Sooner or later every cow on
the range will be goin' to one place or the other to drink, and if we
give 'em a little bait of brush each time it keeps 'em from gittin'
too weak. As long as a cow will rustle she's all right, but the minute
she's too weak to travel she gits to be a water-bum--hangs around the
spring and drinks until she starves to death. But if you feed 'em a
little every day they'll drift back to the ridges at night and pick up
a little more. I'm sorry for them lily-white hands of yourn, pardner,
but which place would you like to work at?"
"Hidden Water," replied Hardy, promptly, "and I bet I can cut as many
trees as you can."
"I'll go you, for a fiver," exclaimed Creede, emulously. "Next time
Rafael comes in tell him to bring me up some more grub and baled hay,
and I'm fixed. And say, when you write to the boss you can tell her
I've traded my gun for an axe!"
As Hardy turned back towards home he swung in a great circle and rode
down the dry bed of the Alamo, where water-worn bowlders and ricks of
mountain drift lay strewn for miles to mark the vanished stream. What
a power it had been in its might, floating sycamores and ironwoods as
if they were reeds, lapping high against the granite walls, moving the
very rocks in its bed until they ground together! But now the sand lay
dry and powdery, the willows and water-moodies were dead to the roots,
and even the ancient cottonwoods from which it derived its name were
dying inch by inch. A hundred years they had stood there, defying
storm and cloudburst, but at last the drought was sucking away their
life. On the mesa the waxy greasewood was still verdant, the gorged
_sahuaros_ stood like great tanks, skin-tight with bitter juice, and
all the desert trees were tipped with green; but the children of the
river were dying for a drink.
A string of cattle coming in from The Rolls stopped and stared at the
solitary horseman, head up against the sky; then as he rode on they
fell in behind him, travelling the deep-worn trail that led to Hidden
Water. At the cleft-gate of the pass, still following the hard-stamped
trail, Hardy turned aside from his course and entered, curious to see
his garden again before it succumbed to the drought. There before him
stood the sycamores, as green and flourishing as ever; the eagle
soared out from his cliff; the bees zooned in their caves; and beyond
the massive dyke that barred the way the tops of the elders waved the
last of their creamy blossoms. In the deep pool the fish still darted
about, and the waterfall that fed it was not diminished. The tinkle of
its music seemed even louder, and as Hardy looked below he saw that a
little stream led way from the pool, flowing in the trench where the
cattle came to drink. It was a miracle, springing from the bosom of
the earth from whence the waters come. When all the world outside lay
dead and bare, Hidden Water flowed more freely, and its garden lived
on untouched.
Never had Hardy seen it more peaceful, and as he climbed the
Indian steps and stood beneath the elder, where _Chupa Rosa_ had
built her tiny nest his heart leapt suddenly as he remembered Lucy.
Here they had sat together in the first gladness of her coming,
reading his forgotten verse and watching the eagle's flight; only for
that one time, and then the fight with the sheep had separated them.
He reached up and plucked a spray of elder blossoms to send her for a
keep-sake--and then like a blow he remembered the forget-me-not! From
that same garden he had fetched her a forget-me-not for repentance,
and then forgotten her for Kitty. Who but Lucy could have left the
little book of poems, or treasured a flower so long to give it back
at parting? And yet in his madness he had forgotten her!
He searched wistfully among the rocks for another forget-me-not, but
the hot breath of the drought had killed them. As he climbed slowly
down the stone steps he mused upon some poem to take the place of the
flowers that were dead, but the spirit of the drought was everywhere.
The very rocks themselves, burnt black by centuries of sun, were
painted with Indian prayers for rain. A thousand times he had seen the
sign, hammered into the blasted rocks--the helix, that mystic symbol
of the ancients, a circle, ever widening, never ending,--and wondered
at the fate of the vanished people who had prayed to the Sun for
rain.
The fragments of their sacrificial _ollas_ lay strewn among the
bowlders, but the worshippers were dead; and now a stranger prayed to
his own God for rain. As he sat at his desk that night writing to Lucy
about the drought, the memory of those Indian signs came upon him
suddenly and, seizing a fresh sheet of paper, he began to write. At
the second stanza he paused, planned out his rhymes and hurried on
again, but just as his poem seemed finished, he halted at the last
line. Wrestle as he would he could not finish it--the rhymes were
against him--it would not come right. Ah, that is what sets the artist
apart from all the under-world of dreamers--his genius endures to the
end; but the near-poet struggles like a bee limed in his own honey.
What a confession of failure it was to send away--a poem unfinished,
or finished wrong! And yet--the unfinished poem was like him. How
often in the past had he left things unsaid, or said them wrong.
Perhaps Lucy would understand the better and prize it for its faults.
At last, just as it was, he sent it off, and so it came to her hand.
A PRAYER FOR RAIN
Upon this blasted rock, O Sun, behold
Our humble prayer for rain--and here below
A tribute from the thirsty stream, that rolled
Bank-full in flood, but now is sunk so low
Our old men, tottering, yet may stride acrost
And babes run pattering where the wild waves tossed.
The grass is dead upon the stem, O Sun!
The lizards pant with heat--they starve for flies--
And they for grass--and grass for rain! Yea, none
Of all that breathe may face these brazen skies
And live, O Sun, without the touch of rain.
Behold, thy children lift their hands--in vain!
Drink up the water from this _olla's_ brim
And take the precious corn here set beside--
Then summon thy dark clouds, and from the rim
Of thy black shield strike him who hath defied
Thy power! Appease thy wrath, Great Sun--but give
Ah, give the touch of rain to those that live!
As it had been a thousand years before, so it was that day at Hidden
Water. The earth was dead, it gave forth nothing; the sky was clean
and hard, without a cloud to soften its asperity. Another month and
the cattle would die; two months and the water would fail; then in the
last agonies of starvation and thirst the dissolution would come--the
Four Peaks would be a desert. Old Don Pablo was right, the world was
drying up. Chihuahua and Sonora were parched; all Arizona lay stricken
with the drought; in California the cattle were dying on the ranges,
and in Texas and New Mexico the same. God, what a thing--to see the
great earth that had supported its children for ages slowly dying for
water, its deserts first, and then its rivers, and then the
pine-topped mountains that gave the rivers birth! Yet what was there
for a man to do but take care of his own and wait? The rest was in the
hands of God.
On the first morning that Hardy took his axe and went down to the
river he found a single bunch of gaunted cattle standing in the shade
of the big mesquites that grew against Lookout Point--a runty cow
with her two-year-old and yearling, and a wobbly calf with a cactus
joint stuck across his nose. His mother's face showed that she, too,
had been among the _chollas_; there was cactus in her knees and long
spines bristling from her jaws, but she could stand it, while it was a
matter of life and death to the calf. Every time he came near his
mother she backed away, and whenever he began to nudge for milk she
kicked out wildly. So Hardy roped him and twitched the joint away with
a stick; then he pulled out the thorns one by one and went about his
work.
Selecting a fine-leaved _palo verde_ that grew against the point, he
cleared a way into its trunk and felled it down the hill. He cut a
second and a third, and when he looked back he saw that his labor was
appreciated; the runty cow was biting eagerly at the first tree-top,
and the wobbly calf was restored to his own. As the sound of the axe
continued, a band of tame cattle came stringing down the sandy
riverbed, and before the morning was over there were ten or twenty
derelicts and water-bums feeding along the hillside. In the afternoon
he cut more trees along the trail to Hidden Water, and the next day
when he went to work he found a little band of weaklings there,
lingering expectantly in the shadow of the canyon wall. As the days
went by more and more of them gathered about the water, the lame, the
sick, the crippled, the discouraged, waiting for more trees to be
felled. Then as the feed on the distant ridges grew thinner and the
number of cut trees increased, a great band of them hung about the
vicinity of the ranch house constantly--the herds from Hidden Water
and the river, merged into one--waiting to follow him to the hills.
For a mile up and down the canyon of the Alamo, the _palo verde_ stumps
dotted the hillside, each with its top below it, stripped to the bark
and bared of every twig. As the breathless heat of July came on, Hardy
was up before dawn, hewing and felling, and each day the long line of
cattle grew. They trampled at his heels like an army, gaunt,
emaciated; mothers mooing for their calves that lay dead along the
gulches; mountain bulls and outlaws, tamed by gnawing hunger and
weakness, and the awful stroke of the heat. And every day other bands
of outlaws, driven at last from their native hills, drifted in to
swell the herd. For a month Hardy had not seen a human face, nor had
he spoken to any living creature except Chapuli or some poor cow that
lay dying by the water. When he was not cutting trees on the farther
ridges, he was riding along the river, helping up those that had
fallen or dragging away the dead.
Worn and foot-sore, with their noses stuck full of cactus joints,
their tongues swollen from the envenomed thorns, their stomachs afire
from thirst and the burden of bitter stalks, the wild cattle from the
ridges would stagger down to the river and drink until their flanks
bulged out and their bellies hung heavy with water. Then, overcome
with fatigue and heat, they would sink down in the shade and lie
dreaming; their limbs would stiffen and cramp beneath them until they
could not move; and there they would lie helpless, writhing their
scrawny necks as they struggled to get their feet under them. To these
every day came Hardy with his rawhide _reata_. Those that he could not
scare up he pulled up; if any had died he dragged the bodies away from
the water; and as soon as the recent arrivals had drunk he turned them
away, starting them on their long journey to the high ridges where the
sheep had not taken the browse.
Ah, those sheep! How many times in the fever of heat and work and
weariness had Hardy cursed them, his tongue seeking unbidden the
wickedest words of the range; how many times had he cursed Jim Swope,
and Jasper Swope, the Mexicans, and all who had rushed in to help
accomplish their ruin. And as the sun beat down and no clouds came
into the sky he cursed himself, blindly, for all that had come to
pass. One man--only one--at the mouth of Hell's Hip Pocket, and the
sheep might have been turned back; but he himself had seen the
dust-cloud and let it pass--and for that the cattle died. The sheep
were far away, feeding peacefully in mountain valleys where the pines
roared in the wind and the nights were cool and pleasant; but if the
rain came and young grass sprang up on Bronco Mesa they would come
again, and take it in spite of them. Yes, even if the drought was
broken and the cattle won back their strength, that great army would
come down from the north once more and sheep them down to the rocks!
But one thing Hardy promised himself--forgetting that it was the
bootless oath of old Bill Johnson, who was crazy now and hiding in the
hills--he would kill the first sheep that set foot on Bronco Mesa, and
the next, as long as he could shoot; and Jasp Swope might answer as he
would.
Yet, why think of sheep and schemes of belated vengeance?--the grass
was gone; the browse was cleaned; even the _palo verde_ trees were
growing scarce. Day by day he must tramp farther and farther along the
ridge, and all that patient, trusting army behind, waiting for him to
find more trees! Already the weakest were left behind and stood along
the trails, eying him mournfully; yet work as he would he could not
feed the rest. There was no fine-drawn distinction now--every _palo
verde_ on the hillside fell before his axe, whether it was fine-leaved
and short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all.
Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at
every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the
armored _sahuaros_. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of
fuzzy _chollas_, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the
resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked
beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ate them died in agony.
Once more Hardy took his ax and went out in search of _palo verdes_,
high or low, young or old. There was a gnarled trunk, curling up
against a rocky butte and protected by two spiny _sahuaros_ that stood
before it like armed guards, and he climbed up the rock to reach it.
Chopping away the first _sahuaro_ he paused to watch it fall. As it
broke open like a giant melon on the jagged rocks below, the cattle
crowded about it eagerly, sniffing at the shattered parts--and then
the hardiest of them began suddenly to eat!
On the outside the wiry spines stood in rows like two-inch knife
blades; but now the juicy heart, laid open by the fall, was exposed,
and the cattle munched it greedily. A sudden hope came to Hardy as he
watched them feed, and, climbing higher, he felled two more of the
desert giants, dropping them from their foothold against the butte far
down into the rocky canyon. As they struck and burst, and the sickly
aroma filled the air, the starved cattle, bitten with a new appetite,
rushed forward in hordes to eat out their bitter hearts. At last, when
the battle had seemed all but over, he had found a new food,--one that
even Pablo Moreno had overlooked,--each plant a ton of bitter pulp and
juice. The coarse and wiry spines, whose edges would turn an axe, were
conquered in a moment by the fall from the precipitous cliffs. And the
mesa was covered with them, like a forest of towering pin-cushions, as
far as the eye could see! A great gladness came over Hardy as he saw
the starved cattle eat, and as soon as he had felled a score or more
he galloped up to Carrizo to tell the news to Jeff.
The mesa was deserted of every living creature. There was not a snake
track in the dust or a raven in the sky, but as he topped the brow of
the hill and looked down into the canyon, Hardy saw a great herd of
cattle, and Creede in the midst of them still hacking away at the
thorny _palo verdes_. At the clatter of hoofs, the big man looked up
from his work, wiping the sweat and grime from his brow, and his face
was hard and drawn from working beyond his strength.
"Hello!" he called. "How's things down your way--water holdin' out?
Well, you're in luck, then; I've had to dig the spring out twice, and
you can see how many cows I'm feedin'. But say," he continued, "d'ye
think it's as hot as this down in hell? Well, if I thought for a
minute it'd be as dry I'd take a big drink and join the church, you
can bet money on that. What's the matter--have you got enough?"
"I've got enough of cutting _palo verdes_," replied Hardy, "but you
just lend me that axe for a minute and I'll show you something." He
stepped to the nearest _sahuaro_ and with a few strokes felled it down
the hill, and when Creede saw how the cattle crowded around the broken
trunk he threw down his hat and swore.
"Well--damn--me," he said, "for a pin-head! Here I've been cuttin'
these ornery _palo verdes_ until my hands are like a Gila monster's
back, and now look at them cows eat giant cactus! There's no use
talkin', Rufe, the feller that wears the number five hat and the
number forty jumper ain't worth hell-room when you're around--here,
gimme that axe!" He seized it in his thorn-scarred hands and whirled
into the surrounding giants like a fury; then when he had a dozen fat
_sahuaros_ laid open among the rocks he came back and sat down panting
in the scanty shade of an ironwood.
"I'm sore on myself," he said. "But that's the way it is! If I'd had
the brains of a rabbit I'd've stopped Jasp Swope last Spring--then I
wouldn't need to be cuttin' brush here all Summer like a Mexican
wood-chopper. That's where we fell down--lettin' them sheep in--and
now we've got to sweat for it. But lemme tell you, boy," he cried,
raising a mighty fist, "if I can keep jest one cow alive until Fall
I'm goin' to meet Mr. Swope on the edge of my range and shoot 'im full
of holes! Nothin' else will do, somebody has got to be _killed_ before
this monkey business will stop! I've been makin' faces and skinnin' my
teeth at that dastard long enough now, and I'm goin' to make him fight
if I have to put high-life on 'im!"
He stopped and looked out over the hillside where the heat quivered in
rainbows from the rocks, and the naked _palo verdes_, stripped of
their bark, bleached like skeletons beside their jagged stumps.
"Say, Rufe," he began, abruptly, "I'm goin' crazy."
He shook his head slowly and sighed. "I always thought I was," he
continued, "but old Bill Johnson blew in on me the other day--he's
crazy, you know--and when I see him I knowed it! W'y, pardner, Bill is
the most _reas-on-able_ son-of-a-gun you can imagine. You can talk
to him by the hour, and outside of bein' a little techy he's all
right; but the minute you mention _sheep_ to him his eye turns glassy
and he's off. Well, that's me, too, and has been for years, only
not quite so bad; but then, Bill is plumb sheeped out and I
ain't--quite!"
He laughed mirthlessly and filled a cigarette.
"You know," he said, squinting his eyes down shrewdly, "that old
feller ain't so durned crazy yet. He wanted some ammunition to shoot
up sheep-camps with, but bein' a little touched, as you might say, he
thought I might hold out on 'im, so he goes at me like this: 'Jeff,'
he says, 'I've took to huntin' lions for the bounty now--me and the
hounds--and I want to git some thirty-thirtys.' But after I'd give him
all I could spare he goes on to explain how the sheep, not satisfied
with eatin' 'im out of house and home, had gone and tolled all the
lions away after 'em--so, of course, he'll have to foller along, too.
You catch that, I reckon."
Creede drooped his eyes significantly and smoked.
"If it hadn't been for old Bill Johnson," he said, "we wouldn't have a
live cow on our range to-day, we'd've been sheeped down that close.
When he'd got his ammunition and all the bacon and coffee I could
spare he sat down and told me how he worked it to move all them sheep
last Spring. After he'd made his first big play and see he couldn't
save the Pocket he went after them sheepmen systematically for his
revenge. That thirty-thirty of his will shoot nigh onto two miles if
you hold it right, and every time he sees a sheep-camp smoke he
Injuned up onto some high peak and took pot-shots at it. At the
distance he was you couldn't hear the report--and, of course, you
couldn't _see_ smokeless powder. He says the way them Mexican herders
took to the rocks was a caution; and when the fireworks was over they
didn't wait for orders, jest rounded up their sheep and hiked!
"And I tell you, pardner," said the big cowman impressively, "after
thinkin' this matter over in the hot sun I've jest about decided to go
crazy myself. Yes, sir, the next time I hear a sheep-blat on Bronco
Mesa I'm goin' to tear my shirt gittin' to the high ground with a
thirty-thirty; and if any one should inquire you can tell 'em that
your pore friend's mind was deranged by cuttin' too many _palo
verdes_." He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and
as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a
portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if God ever
sent the rain.
On the day after the visit to Carrizo a change came over the sky; a
haze that softened the edges of the hills rose up along the horizon,
and the dry wind died away. As Hardy climbed along the rocky bluffs
felling the giant _sahuaros_ down into the ravines for his cattle, the
sweat poured from his face in a stream. A sultry heaviness hung over
the land, and at night as he lay beneath the _ramada_ he saw the
lightning, hundreds of miles away, twinkling and playing along the
northern horizon. It was a sign--the promise of summer rain!
In the morning a soft wind came stealing in from the west; a white
cloud came up out of nothing and hovered against the breast of the
Peaks; and the summer heat grew terrible. At noon the cloud turned
black and mounted up, its fluffy summit gleaming in the light of the
ardent sun; the wind whirled across the barren mesa, sweeping great
clouds of dust before it, and the air grew damp and cool; then, as
evening came on the clouds vanished suddenly and the wind died down to
a calm. For a week the spectacle was repeated--then, at last, as if
weary, the storm-wind refused to blow; the thunder-caps no longer
piled up against the Peaks; only the haze endured, and the silent,
suffocating heat.
Day after day dragged by, and without thought or hope Hardy plodded
on, felling _sahuaros_ into the canyons, his brain whirling in the
fever of the great heat. Then one day as the sun rose higher a
gigantic mass of thunder-clouds leapt up in the north, covering half
the sky. The next morning they rose again, brilliant, metallic,
radiating heat like a cone of fire. The heavens were crowned with
sudden splendor, the gorgeous pageantry of summer clouds that rise
rank upon rank, basking like newborn cherubim in the glorious light
of the sun, climbing higher and higher until they reached the zenith.
A moist breeze sprang up and rushed into the storm's black heart,
feeding it with vapors from the Gulf; then in the south, the home of
the rain, another great cloud arose, piling in fluffy billows against
the grim cliffs of the Superstitions and riding against the flying
cohorts that reared their snowy heads in the north. The wind fell and
all nature lay hushed and expectant, waiting for the rain. The cattle
would not feed; the bearded ravens sat voiceless against the cliffs;
the gaunt trees and shrubs seemed to hold up their arms--for the rain
that did not come. For after all its pomp and mummery, its black
mantle that covered all the sky and the bravery of its trailing
skirts, the Storm, that rode in upon the wind like a king, slunk away
at last like a beaten craven. Its black front melted suddenly, and its
draggled banners, trailing across the western sky, vanished utterly in
the kindling fires of sunset.
As he lay beneath the starlit sky that night, Hardy saw a vision of
the end, as it would come. He saw the canyons stripped clean of their
high-standing _sahuaros_, the spring at Carrizo dry, the river
stinking with the bodies of the dead--even Hidden Water quenched at
last by the drought. Then a heavy sleep came upon him as he lay
sprawling in the pitiless heat and he dreamed--dreamed of gaunt steers
and lowing cows, and skeletons, strewn along the washes; of labor,
never ending, and sweat, dripping from his face. He woke suddenly with
the horror still upon him and gazed up at the sky, searching vainly
for the stars. The night was close and black, there was a stir among
the dead leaves as if a snake writhed past, and the wind breathed
mysteriously through the bare trees; then a confused drumming came to
his ears, something warm and wet splashed against his face, and into
his outstretched hand God sent a drop of rain.