housand feet above the heads of the men whom it had lured
here. There was no sound of any life, no track of any animal. No
bird--not even a buzzard--flew overhead. The very air was a desert
like the burning earth.

Now, even as they came down out of Furnace Creek canyon into this trap,
they began their efforts to escape from it.

The Bennett party crossed the sink through the forest of rock-salt
pinnacles and headed southward along a strip of loose sand which lay
between the mud flat and the mountains. They believed the range might
yet show a rift at this end which their wagons could traverse. But the
Jayhawkers turned to the north, seeking some outlet through the
Panamints at that end of the range. One family followed them. J. W
Brier, a minister from a little frontier community in the Middle West,
left the other section with his wife and three children in the hope
that the young men might find a route to safety.

Sometimes to this day the winds, moving the dunes of white sand in the
valley's northern arm--a task which they are always at from year's end
to year's end--uncover the fragments of wagons, and prospectors come
upon a tire or spoke or portion of a sun-dried axle. Then they know
that they are at the place where the Jayhawkers abandoned their
prairie-schooners.

They killed some of their oxen at this point and divided the
meat--there was so little of it that although the men were now very
weak two of them were able to carry the beef from an animal. Then they
started out on foot across the sand dunes toward the Panamints. Most
of them still believed that feed and water lay just beyond those
heights.

And now, while they were straggling along through the loose sand in
single file, one of their number, a man named Fish, was seen to throw
his hands above his head and pitch forward on his face. Those who were
behind came upon him lying with arms outspread, dead.

The next afternoon as they were climbing toward the head of a steep
canyon in the range, several of the foremost ones found a little spring
among the rocks. While they were resting here they saw a man far below
them. He was crawling toward them on his hands and knees. One of the
party filled his canteen and hurried down to meet him; but when he
arrived, the other was gasping his last in the bottom of the sun-baked
gorge. It was Captain Culverwell, a skipper who had forsaken the deep
sea and its ships to make this journey with them in the hope of
fin