as
scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there
perfectly still.

Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide
wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it
was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us,
and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our
faces and sting like fire, and Tom sung out:

"It's a sand-storm--turn your backs to it!"

We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn't see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was
setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads
out and could hardly breathe.

Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and
looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but
just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and
camels was smothered and dead and buried--buried under ten foot of sand,
we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered
them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of
that caravan. Tom said:

"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."

Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit
to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a
person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this
last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see,
the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted
with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching
the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering
around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling
real friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there
ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than
to travel with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the
start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we
traveled with them, and the more we got used