and dark and shriveled and leathery, like the pictures
of mummies you see in books. And yet they looked
just as human, you wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it; just like
they was asleep.
Some of the people and animals was partly covered
with sand, but most of them not, for the sand was
thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard. Most
of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took
hold of a rag, it tore with a touch, like spider-
web. Tom reckoned they had been laying there for
years.
Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had
swords on and had shawl belts with long, silver-
mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had
their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted
and spilt the freight out on the ground. We didn’t
reckon the swords was any good to the dead people
any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols.
We took a small box, too, because it was so handsome
and inlaid so fine; and then we wanted to bury the
people; but there warn’t no way to do it that we could
think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that
would blow away again, of course.
Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty
soon that black spot on the sand was out of sight, and
we wouldn’t ever see them poor people again in this
world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to
guess how they come to be there, and how it all hap-
pened to them, but we couldn’t make it out. First we
thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and
about till their food and water give out and they
starved to death; but Tom said no wild animals nor
vultures hadn’t meddled with them, and so that guess
wouldn’t do. So at last we give it up, and judged we
wouldn’t think about it no more, because it made us
low-spirited.
Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels
in it, quite a pile, and some little veils of the kind the
dead women had on, with fringes made out of curious
gold money that we warn’t acquainted with. We
wondered if we better go and try to find them again
and give it back; but Tom thought it over and said
no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they
would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on
us for putting the temptation in their way. So we
went on; but I wished we had took all they had, so
there wouldn’t ‘a’ been no temptation at all left.
We had had two hours of that blazing weather down
there, and was dreadful thirsty when we got aboard
again. We went straight for the water, but it was
spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough
to scald your mouth. We couldn’t drink it. It was
Mississippi river water, the best in the world, and we
stirred up the mud in it to see if that would help, but
no, the mud wasn’t any better than the water.
Well, we hadn’t been so very, very thirsty before,
while we was interested in the lost people, but we was
now, and as soon as we found we couldn’t have a
drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as
we was a quarter of a minute before. Why, in a little
while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant
like a dog.
Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, every-
wheres, because we’d got to find an oasis or there
warn’t no telling what would happen. So we done it.
We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our
arms got so tired we couldn’t hold them any more.
Two hours — three hours — just gazing and gazing,
and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see
the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear,
dear, a body don’t know what real misery is till he is
thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain’t ever