Chapter XIII The Minne-to-wauk-pala
It was with the greatest reluctance that the travelers parted with Jim Ward and his good-natured wife. For many days they had seen no other human beings, and the relief of being with and talking with them was so great that it took a determined effort to leave the cheerful dugout and its occupants and turn their faces once more toward the uninhabited plains.
They had traveled but a few miles in the calm clear light of morning when they saw not a quarter of a mile ahead of them thirty or forty beautiful antelope. They were cantering across the prairie, their little white cotton tails shining in the sunshine, the light gleaming on their pretty dappled sides. They were playing and leaping, and their curious antics made the boys shout with laughter.
“Wonderful chance to get an antelope,” said Lige with shining eyes; but Joe shook his head. “Could you shoot one of those beautiful creatures?” he asked. “I swear I couldn’t.”
The antelope seemed to have but little fear of them, and cantered along for some distance, stopping now and then to crop the grass. After a time they raced away toward the south, and were lost to view.
It was now well on in August. Even at the early hour at which they had started there was a scorching wind blowing, and as the day advanced the sun beat down on the prairies from a cloudless sky with an intensity that promised a day of intolerable heat.
The family dispensed with every garment possible, and sat under the canvas covers fairly parching with heat, while the hot wind seemed fairly to scorch the prairies, and to burn and shrivel their skins.
Many times during the day they had to stop the horses, and at last Joe conceived the idea of making pads for their heads from the prairie grass, which he kept wet with water, brought from the well of the hospitable Wards.
It was toward three o’clock in the afternoon, at the very hottest part of the day, that Mrs. Peniman looking out of the front of the wagon suddenly exclaimed aloud.
“Why,” she cried, “look, look, Joshua, there is a lake before us!”
Mr. Peniman, who was half-dozing on his seat, started wide awake.
“A lake?” he cried. “A lake in this country? Where?”
“Why, see, over there,” pointing ahead of them, “a beautiful blue lake! See how the water ripples in the sunshine?”
The children, roused from the dull stupor into which they had fallen, were all crowding to the front of the wagon to look out. Joe and Lige on the high seats of the two other wagons craned their necks to see. They all set up a great hurrahing, but Mr. Peniman, after one long look, said nothing.
Suddenly his wife, who had been gazing with steadfast gaze at the entrancing sight, caught his arm.
“Joshua”—she cried,—“that lake—it looks very strange to me! Could it be that—I have read—oh, could it be that there is no lake—that it is—that it is——”
He laid his hand over hers with a tender, sympathetic pressure.
“Yes, dear heart, I hate to dispel thy illusion, but there is no lake there. It is a mirage.”
“A mirage? What’s a mirage, Father?” asked Sam, his face reflecting his bitter disappointment.
“It is just an air-picture, my son, an optical illusion.”
“You mean”—cried Joe, incredulously—“you mean that there is no lake there? Why, how can that be, Father? We can see it; it is right there before our eyes——”
Mr. Peniman shook his head wearily.
“It is a trick of the plains,” he said. “It almost seems that its only purpose is to torture and mislead thirsty travelers like ourselves.”
“But if it isn’t a lake,” propounded Lige, “what is it? We see it, it is there before us——”
“But don’t you notice, my boy, that the trees that appear to surround it are upside down?”
The whole family gazed fixedly at the supposed “lake.”
Blue as the heavens, ruffled by the breath of early morning, surrounded by waving trees, it lay tantalizingly before their eyes.
“I have never seen a mirage before,” said Mr. Peniman, “but I know that they are a common occurrence on the plains, and in all arid and desert country. They are due to a condition existing in the atmosphere, caused by the reflection of light. What we see over there is probably the reflection of the sky, and as the reflection surface is irregular and constantly varies its position the reflected image will be constantly varying, and is what gives it the appearance of a body of water ruffled by the wind.”
For a time the mirage endured, tantalizing them with its beauty, then suddenly faded, the alluring vision disappeared, and its place was filled by the parched grass of the prairies.
It was a bitter disappointment, the more bitter because of the hope it had aroused in their breasts.
Toward evening they saw, outlined against the western sky, two emigrant wagons crawling along over the plains. But so great was the distance, so wide and expressionless the plains that they scarcely seemed to move forward, but to remain stationary against the brazen sky.
There was no sign of shade or water on all the great expanse as the sun went down, and having traveled until twilight had fallen they made their night camp on the dry, barren prairie, with stars and sky and grass their only company.
They had now been two months on the road, and both horses and individuals were feeling the strain.
The horses were stiff, thin and lame, the cow a mere bag of bones, and the children cross and fretful.
Mrs. Peniman had lost her round curves and pretty complexion, and her husband’s beard had grown long, and he was so brown and sinewy that his friends in Ohio would scarcely have known him.
They were all heartily tired of the weary crawling and jolting of the wagons across the barren prairies, and rose with aching heads and dragging limbs and moved wearily about the business of getting under way again without enthusiasm.
The day came up, as do so many days upon the western prairies, with a cloudless sky, blue as amethyst, and a sun that rode triumphant in a blazing chariot from rim to rim of a blistering world.
At noon the teams were so exhausted that the travelers were obliged to stop and unhitch them, leading them into the shade of the wagons to relieve them for a while from the rays of the broiling sun.
As the hot afternoon sun climbed into the heavens the very prairies seemed to drowse and sleep. Over their heads a few buzzards flapped lazily, and before them the gauzy heat-waves rose from the ground shimmering and dancing while the slow, monotonous klop, klop, klop of the horses’ feet was the only sound to be heard.
Inside the wagons David and Mary had fallen asleep, Ruth and Nina, with their heads upon their sun-browned arms, had passed away into dreamland, Sam read, Lige dozed, Joe was nodding over his book, and even Mr. Peniman was drowsing.
Only Mrs. Peniman, sitting upon the front seat of the wagon, with her chin in her hands, and her eyes fixed on the distant horizon, was awake.
Thoughts were too busy in the aching head under the faded sunbonnet to let her sleep.
No one—not the husband so close at her side, not the children about whom the chords of her heart were knit—knew what this journey into the wilderness was costing her.
The lonely little mound back there on the prairies was seldom out of her mind, and the homesick longing for her home and her mothers and sisters so far away in the East, was sometimes almost more than she could bear.
As the thoughts of her lost baby, and all that she had left behind back there in that sweet and verdant country crossed her mind, hot tears rushed into her eyes. She blinked them resolutely away. She thought at first as she looked up that it was the tears that blinded her. Then as she wiped them away she drew a little gasping breath and looked—and looked again. At first her heart gave a great leap, then sank down drearily as she thought of the experience of the previous afternoon.
With a determined effort she turned her head away. Then when the torture of suspense would be no longer borne, she looked back.
Away on the distant western horizon there was a bluish haze.
She laid her hand very gently on her husband’s arm.
“Joshua,” she whispered, “I hate to rouse thee, but—look off there to the west; what is it we see? Is it—is it another mirage? It looks as if there were trees there. I have been looking and looking, but I was afraid to speak. I hated to awaken your hopes—it is so hard——”
The weary man roused himself. With hands clasped above his eyes he gazed off over the prairies.
After a long interval he said, ‘“I think—I believe—it does look like timber! Of course it is a long way off yet—but——”
His voice ceased, as he fixed his whole attention on the horizon.
Presently he spoke again, this time more decidedly.
“I believe there is a patch of timber over there. There must be a stream of some sort near. Don’t wake the children, let them sleep; we will make for it as fast as we can.”
Pushing the limping horses forward as fast as they were able to travel, the prairie schooners rolled on across the prairie, and the man and woman upon the wagon seat leaned forward and watched the horizon with straining eyes.
It was near evening when a breeze, bearing something fresh and fragrant on its breath, blew into the wagons and roused their drowsy occupants.
Joe woke with a start. His team was plodding along steadily, but his father’s wagon was some distance in advance of it, while the Carroll wagon, with Lige nodding upon the driver’s seat, was far in the rear.
He rubbed his eyes, caught up the lines and puckered his lips for a whistle. But the whistle was never uttered.
Instead there came from his chapped lips a startled exclamation.
Rubbing his eyes he looked and looked, and looked again. Then reaching behind him he grabbed Sam by one of his bare brown feet and shook it vigorously.
“Say, Sam, wake up here!” he shouted. “I want you to tell me if I’m crazy or if my eyes have gone bad or if I’m seeing another mirage! If I’m not plumb crazy there’s a river over there, and trees——”
“Who said ‘river’—who said ’trees’?” cried Sam, starting up; then he stopped short, staring ahead with an incredulous expression.
“Is it—it ain’t—it can’t be another mirage, can it?”
Joe gave a loud, joyous laugh and cracked his whip over the backs of the horses. He had had time to look again and he was satisfied.
“Mirage nothin’!” he exulted, “nary a mirage this time! Can’t you smell it? Can’t you taste it? Can’t you feel the moisture in the air? You bet your life this isn’t a mirage, it’s the real thing, shade, water, grass, trees! And it ain’t far off either!”
By this time the blur of bluish haze had developed into a tone of decided green, and there was no more doubt that trees and water were in sight. Mr. Peniman was stooping forward gazing intently.
“I was told that there was a river not far from here,” he said to his wife, “and I think it should be in just about this location. It is called by the Indian name ‘Minne-to-wauk-pala,’ or Blue Waters.”
“I don’t care what it is called,” said Mrs. Peniman, laughing joyously, “if it is only there. I don’t think I could stand another shock like that mirage.”
“You won’t have to, my dear,” said Mr. Peniman, his face lighting, “for, look, we can begin to see the trees and water now.”