e days
dragged by to weary weeks, the men and women always gazed into the
north where nothing lived except the hatred for the sun. But no man
came, and when the weeks had grown beyond a month, they knew the time
was here when they must make one last attempt to save themselves. They
yoked up the oxen and set out into the south toward a spot where
Bennett had discovered what looked like a gap in the mountains. Three
days later they returned, half dead from thirst, and unhitched the
staggering animals by the well.

There remained one shadow of a chance, as ephemeral as the mirage
which came before them with the mounting of each morning's sun. They
stripped the tops from the prairie-schooners and began to make
pack-saddles from them with the idea of abandoning the vehicles and
following the trail of the Jayhawkers.

At midday they were sitting under the wagons for what shade they gave,
working at this task. They knew it was a futile proceeding; the time
had long since gone when they had enough provisions to last them
through that long northern route. But they were not the sort of people
who can sit down and die. If they must perish it would be while they
were still fighting. No one spoke. The silence of the dead land had
crept over them.

That silence was broken by a shot. Unbelieving, they crept forth and
saw three figures moving toward them from the north. Manley and Rogers
were hurring across the flat leading a laden mule.

While the others ate from the store in the pack-sacks, the two young
fellows told of their journey two hundred and fifty miles across the
Mohave Desert; of the dead of the Jayhawker party whom they had found
beside the trail; of the survivors whom they passed shortly before
reaching a ranch near the head of the San Fernando valley where the
little town of Newhall stands to-day; of great arid mountain ranges
and shimmering floors of dried lakes; and of the long torture between
water-holes. At the Newhall ranch a man named French had given them
the mule and the provisions. With this food supply they believed the
women and children stood a chance of getting through.

They slung the sacks of canvas on the gaunt oxen and placed the
children in them; then they set out on their long climb up the
Panamints.

Before they left the summit of the divide to go downhill into the
west, they halted for one last look back. And as they stood there
among the rocks gazing down into the sink which lay thousands of