here was none in the chapparal; the trackers saw none so
far as they had gone: we were in a waterless desert; and the very
thought itself renders the pang of thirst keener and harder to endure.

Some chewed their leaden bullets, or pebbles of chalcedony which they
had picked up; others obtained relief by drinking the blood of the
slaughtered animals--the bear and the antelope--but we found a better
source of assuagement in the succulent stems of the cactus and agave.

The relief was but temporary: the juice cooled our lips and tongues, but
there is an acrid principle in some of these plants that soon acted, and
our thirst became more intense than ever.

Some talked of returning on the trail in search of water--of going back
even to the stream--more than twenty miles distant.

Under such circumstances, even military command loses its authority.
Nature is stronger than martial law.

I cared not if they did return; I cared not who left me, so long as the
trappers remained true. I had no fear that they would forsake me; and
my disapprobation of it checked the cheerless proposal, and once more
all declared their willingness to go on.

Fortunately, at that crisis the smoke began to clear away, and the
atmosphere to lighten up. The fire had burnt on to the edge of the
chapparal, where it was now opposed by the sap-bearing trees. The grass
had been all consumed--the conflagration was at an end.

Mounting our horses, we rode out from the glade; and following the trail
a few hundred yards farther, we emerged from the thicket, and stood upon
the edge of the desolated plain.

CHAPTER SEVENTY.

A BURNT PRAIRIE.

The earth offers no aspect more drear and desolate than that of a burnt
prairie. The ocean when its waves are grey--a blighted heath--a flat
fenny country under a rapid thaw--all these impress the beholder with a
feeling of chill monotony; but the water has motion, the heath, colour,
and the half-thawed flat exhibits variety in its mottling of white and
ground.

Not so the steppe that has been fired and burned. In this, the eye
perceives neither colour, nor form, nor motion. It roams over the
limitless level in search of one or other, but in vain; and in the
absence of all three, it tires, and the heart grows cheerless and sick.
Even the sky scarcely offers relief. It, too, by refraction from the
black surface beneath, wears a dull livid aspect; or perhaps the eye,
jaundiced by the reflection of the e