"
It was not a pretty spot, this little rock-strewn glade where the white
hard trail forked with the road. The yellow water with its green scum
made Hare sick. The horses drank with loud gulps. Naab and his sons
drank of it. The women filled a pail and portioned it out in basins and
washed their faces and hands with evident pleasure. Dave Naab whistled
as he wielded an axe vigorously on a cedar. It came home to Hare that
the tension of the past night and morning had relaxed. Whether to
attribute that fact to the distance from White Sage or to the arrival at
the water-hole he could not determine. But the certainty was shown in
August's cheerful talk to the horses as he slipped bags of grain over
their noses, and in the subdued laughter of the women. Hare sent up an
unspoken thanksgiving that these good Mormons had apparently escaped from
the dangers incurred for his sake. He sat with his back to a cedar and
watched the kindling of fires, the deft manipulating of biscuit dough in
a basin, and the steaming of pots. The generous meal was spread on a
canvas cloth, around which men and women sat cross-legged, after the
fashion of Indians.
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