The day was very hot, with the scorching breeze of the plains that sears the very eyeballs dry.  Through the dust and glare we pressed on over long, white, monotonous miles.  Hovering near us somewhere were the Comanches—­waiting; with us was burning thirst; ahead of us ran the taunting mirage—­cool, sparkling water rippling between green banks—­receding as we approached, maddening us by the suggestion of its refreshing picture, the while we knew it was only a picture.  For it is Satan’s own painting on the desert to let men know that Dante’s dream is mild compared to the real art of torment.  Men and animals began to give way under the day’s burden, and we moved slowly.  In times like these Jondo stayed with the train, sending Bill Banney and Beverly scouting ahead.  That was the longest day that I ever lived on the Santa Fe Trail, although I followed its miles many times in the best of its freighting years.

The weary hours dragged at last toward evening, and a dozen signs in plains lore told us that water must be near.  As we topped a low swell at the bottom of whose long slide lay the little oasis we were seeking, we came upon Bill Banney’s pony lying dead across the trail.  And near it Bill himself, with bloated face and bleared eyes, muttering half-coherently: 

“Water-hole!  Poison!  Don’t drink!”

And then he babbled of the muddy Missouri, and the Kentucky blue grass, and cold mountain springs in the passes of the Gloriettas, warning us thickly of “death down there.”

“Down there,” beside the little spring shelved in by shale at the lower edge of the swell, we found a tiny cairn built of clumps of sod and bits of shale.  Fastened on it was a scrap from Bill’s note-book with the words

     Spring poisoned.  Bev gone for water not very far on.—­BILL.

So Bill had drunk the poisoned water and had tried to reach us.  But for fear he might not do it, he had scrawled this warning and left it here.  Brave Bill!  How madly he had staggered round the place and threshed the ground in agony when he tried to mount his poisoned pony, and his first thought was for us.  The plains made men see big.  Jondo had told me they could do it.  Poor Bill, moaning for water now and tossing in agony in Jondo’s wagon!  The Comanches had been cunning in their malice.  How we hated them as we stood looking at the waters of that poisoned spring!

Rex Krane’s big, gentle hands were holding Bill’s.  Rex always had a mother’s heart; while Jondo read the ground with searching glance.

“We will wait here a little while.  Bev will report soon, I hope.  Come, Gail,” he said to me.  “Here is something we will follow now.”

A single trail led far away from the beaten road toward a stretch of coarse dry yucca and loco-weeds that hid a little steep-sided draw across the plains.  At the bottom of it a man lay face downward beside a dead pony.  We scrambled down, shattering the dry earth after us as we went.  Jondo gently lifted the body and turned it face upward.  It was Ferdinand Ramero.