The buzzards sailing aloft looked down on the Humboldt Sink as we would look upon a relief map.  Near the centre of the map a tiny cloud of white dust crawled slowly forward.  The buzzards stooped to poise above it.

Two ox wagons plodded along.  A squirrel—­were such a creature possible—­would have stirred disproportionately the light alkali dust; the two heavy wagons and the shuffling feet of the beasts raised a cloud.  The fitful furnace draught carried this along at the slow pace of the caravan, which could be seen only dimly, as through a dense fog.

The oxen were in distress.  Evidently weakened by starvation, they were proceeding only with the greatest difficulty.  Their tongues were out, their legs spread, spasmodically their eyes rolled back to show the whites, from time to time one or another of them uttered a strangled, moaning bellow.  They were white with the powdery dust, as were their yokes, the wagons, and the men who plodded doggedly alongside.  Finally, they stopped.  The dust eddied by; and the blasting sun fell upon them.

The driver of the leading team motioned to the other.  They huddled in the scanty shade alongside the first wagon.  Both men were so powdered and caked with alkali that their features were indistinguishable.  Their red-rimmed, inflamed eyes looked out as though from masks.

The one who had been bringing up the rear looked despairingly toward the mountains.

“We’ll never get there!” he cried.

“Not the way we are now,” replied the other.  “But I intend to get there.”

“How?”

“Leave your wagon, Jim; it’s the heaviest.  Put your team on here.”

“But my wagon is all I’ve got in the world!” cried the other, “and we’ve got near a keg of water yet!  We can make it!  The oxen are pulling all right!”

His companion turned away with a shrug, then thought better of it and turned back.

“We’ve thrown out all we owned except bare necessities,” he explained, patiently.  “Your wagon is too heavy.  The time to change is while the beasts can still pull.”

“But I refuse!” cried the other.  “I won’t do it.  Go ahead with your wagon.  I’ll get mine in, John Gates, you can’t bulldoze me.”

Gates stared him in the eye.

“Get the pail,” he requested, mildly.

He drew water from one of the kegs slung underneath the wagon’s body.  The oxen, smelling it, strained weakly, bellowing.  Gates slowly and carefully swabbed out their mouths, permitted them each a few swallows, rubbed them pityingly between the horns.  Then he proceeded to unyoke the four beasts from the other man’s wagon and yoked them to his own.  Jim started to say something.  Gates faced him.  Nothing was said.

“Get your kit,” Gates commanded, briefly, after a few moments.  He parted the hanging canvas and looked into the wagon.  Built to transport much freight it was nearly empty.  A young woman lay on a bed spread along the wagon bottom.  She seemed very weak.