They were west of the Sabine, but only God knew where.

For three days, their stolid oxen had plodded up a blazing valley as flat and featureless as a dead sea.
Molten glare singed their eyelids an angry crimson;
suffocating air sapped their strength and strained their nerves to snapping;
dust choked their throats and lay like acid in their lungs.
And the valley stretched endlessly out ahead, scorched and baked and writhing in its heat, until it vanished into the throbbing wall of fiery orange brown haze.

Ben Prime extended his high-stepped stride until he could lay his goad across the noses of the oxen.
"Hoa-whup"!
He commanded from his raw throat, and felt the pain of movement in his cracked, black burned lips.

He removed his hat to let the trapped sweat cut rivulets through the dust film upon his gaunt face.
He spat.
The dust-thick saliva came from his mouth like balled cotton.
He moved back to the wheel and stood there blowing, grasping the top of a spoke to still the trembling of his played-out limbs.
The burning air dried his sweat-soaked clothes in salt-edged patches.

He cleared his throat and wet his lips.
As cheerfully as possible, he said, "Well, I guess we could all do with a little drink".

He unlashed the dipper and drew water from a barrel.
They could no longer afford the luxury of the canvas sweat bag that cooled it by evaporation.
The water was warm and stale and had a brackish taste.
But it was water.
Thank the Lord, they still had water!

He cleansed his mouth with a small quantity.
He took a long but carefully controlled draught.
He replenished the dipper and handed it to his young wife riding the hurricane deck.
She took it grudgingly, her dark eyes baleful as they met his.

She drank and pushed back her gingham bonnet to wet a kerchief and wipe her face.
She set the dipper on the edge of the deck, leaving it for him to stretch after it while she looked on scornfully.

"What happens when there's no more water"?
She asked smolderingly.

She was like charcoal, he thought -- dark, opaque, explosive.
Her thick hair was the color and texture of charcoal.
Her temper sparked like charcoal when it first lights up.
And all the time, she had the heat of hatred in her, like charcoal that is burning on its under side, but not visibly.

A ripple ran through the muscles of his jaws, but he kept control upon his voice.

"There must be some water under there".
He tilted his homely face toward the dry bed of the river.
"We can get it if we dig", he said patiently.

"And add fever to our troubles"?
She scoffed.
"Or do you want to see if I can stand fever, too"?

"We can boil it", he said.

Her chin sharpened.
"We're lost and burning up already", she bit out tensely.
"The tires are rattling on the wheels now.
They'll roll off in another day.
There was no valley like this on your map.
You don't even know where we're headed".

"Hettie", he said as gently as he could, "we're still headed west.
Somewhere, we'll hit a trail".

"Somewhere!"
She repeated.
"Maybe in time to make a cross and dig our graves".

His wide mouth compressed.
In a way, he couldn't blame her.
He had picked out this pathless trail, instead of the common one, in a moment of romantic fancy, to give them privacy on their honeymoon.

It had been a mistake, but anything would have been a mistake, as it turned out.
It wasn't the roughness and crudity and discomfort of the trip that had frightened her.
She had hated the whole idea before they started.
Actually, she had hated him before she ever saw him.
It had been five days too late before he learned that she'd gone through the wedding ceremony in a semitrance of laudanum, administered by her mother.

The bitterness of their wedding night still ripped within him like an open wound.
She had jumped away from his shy touch like a cat confronted by a sidewinder.
He had left her inviolate, thinking familiarity would gentle her in time.
But each mile westward, she had hated him the deeper.

He stared at the dipper, turning it over and over in his wide, calloused hands.
"I suppose", he muttered, "I can sell the outfit for enough to send you home to your folks, once we find a settlement".

"Don't try to be noble"!
Her laugh was hard.
"They wouldn't have sold me in the first place if there'd been food enough to go around".

He winced.
"Hettie, they didn't sell you", he said miserably.
"They knew I was a good sharecrop farmer back in Carolina, but out West was a chance to build a real farm of our own.
They thought it would be a chance for you to make a life out where nobody will be thought any better than the next except for just what's inside of them.
Without money or property, what would you have had at Baton Rouge"?

"I might have starved, but at least I wouldn't be fried to a crisp and soaked with dirt"!

He darkened under his heavy burn.
His blue eyes sought the shimmering sea of haze ahead.

To his puzzlement, there suddenly was no haze.
The valley lay clear, and open to the eye, right up to the sharp-limbed line of gaunt, scoured hills that formed the horizon twenty miles ahead.

Then he noticed the clouds racing upon them -- heavy, ominous, leaden clouds that formed even as they sliced over the crests of the surrounding hills.
He had never seen clouds like them before, but he had the primitive feel of danger that gripped a man before a hurricane in Carolina.

He hollered hoarsely, "Hang on"!
And goaded the oxen as he yelled.
He wanted to turn them, putting the wagon against the storm.
Too late, he realized that in turning, he had wheeled them onto a patch of sandy ground, instead of atop a grade or ridge.

He swung up over the wheel.
"You had better get inside", he warned her.

But she sat on in stubborn silence.

The clouds bulged downward and burst suddenly into a great black funnel.
Frozen, they stared at it whirling down the valley, gouging and spitting out boulders and chunks of earth like a starving hound dog cracking marrowbones.
The six-ton Conestoga began to whip and shake.

Their world turned black.
It was filled with dust and wind and sound and violence.
The heavens opened, pelting them with hail the size of walnuts.
And then came the water -- not rain, but solid sheets that sluiced down like water slopping from a bucket.
Walls of water rushed down the slopes and filled the hollows like the crests of flash floods.
Through the splash of the rising waters, they could hear the roar of the river as it raged through its canyon, gnashing big chunks out of the banks.

The jetting, frothing surface of the river reached the level of the runoff.
The dangerous current upon the prairie ceased, but the water stood and kept on rising.
They cringed under sodden covers, listening to the waves slop against the bottom.

The cloudburst cut off abruptly.
They were engulfed by the weird silence, broken only by the low, angry murmur of the river.
Then the darkness thinned, and there was light again, and then bright sunlight.

Beaten with fear and sound and wet and chill, they crawled to the hurricane deck and looked out haggardly at a world of water that reached clear to the surrounding hills.
The water level was higher than their hubs.
Only the heavy bones of the oxen kept them anchored.

There was no real sign of the river now, just a roiling, oily ribbon of liquid movement through muddy waters that reached everywhere.
Clumps of brush rode down the ribbon.
Now and then, the glistening side of a half-swamped object showed as it swept past.

The girl crawled out into the renewing warmth of the sunshine, hugging her shoulders and still trembling.
Her face was pale but set and her dark eyes smoldered with blame for Ben.

Out of compulsion to say something cheery, Ben Prime blurted, "Well, we were lucky to be on soft ground when the first floodheads hit.
At least, the wheels dug in.
The soaking will put life back in the wagon, too".

His wife didn't give a sign she'd heard.
She was watching a tree ride wildly down that roiling current.
Somebody was riding the tree.
It raced closer and they could see a woman with white hair, sitting astride an upright branch.

She did not call out.
But as the tree passed, she lifted an arm in gesture of better luck and farewell.
They watched the tree until it twisted sharply on a bend.
It speared up into the air, then sinking back, the up-jutting branch turned slowly.
The pale blob of the woman disappeared.

"There's the one who's lucky"!
The girl murmured harshly.

Ben's eyes strained with the bitter hurt, his homely face slashed with gray and crimson.
Then he took off his wet boots and dropped down into the water to talk with the beasts, needing their comfort more than they needed his.

It was nearly sundown and he went to the back of the wagon, half-swimming his way, for he was not a tall man.
He let down the tailgate and was knocked over by the sluice of water.

He sputtered back to his feet and scrambled madly to pull his bags of seed grain forward.
They were already swollen to bursting.
Of all their worldly belongings, next to the oxen and his gun, the seed grain had been the most treasured.
It was spoiled now for seed, and it would sour and mold in three days if they failed to find a place and fuel to dry it.
The oxen might as well enjoy it.

He examined the water marks on the iron tires when the animals were finished.
The waters lay muddy but placid, without a ripple of movement against the wheels;
there was not a match-width of damp mark to show they were receding.

He doubted if a man could wade as far as the desolate, dry hills that rimmed the valley.
A terrible, numbing sense of futility swept over him.

He gripped the wheel hard to fight the despondency of defeat.
Then he noticed that the dry wood of the wheels had swollen.
The spokes were tight again, the iron tires gripped onto the wheels as if of one piece.

Hope surged within him.
He swung toward the front to give the news to Hettie, then stopped, barred from her by the vehemence of her blame and hate.
Still, he felt better.
A tight wagon meant so much.

He got a small fire started and put on bacon and coffee.
He poured the water off the sourdough and off the flour, salvaging the chunky, watery messes for biscuits of a sort.
Their jams and jellies had not suffered.
He found a jar of preserved tomatoes and one of eggs that they had meant to save.
Now he broke them open, hoping a good meal might lessen this depression crushing Hettie.

His long nose wiggled at the smells of frizzling bacon and heating java, but the fire was low, and he wanted to waste no time.
He furled the slashed sides of the canvas tarpaulins, leaving the ribs and wagon open.

He looked thoughtfully at his wife's trunk, holding her meager treasures.
He said hesitantly, "Hettie, I don't figure your things got wet too much.
That's a good trunk.
If you want to get them aired"

She said without turning her head, "After that rain beating in atop the dust, there isn't a thing that won't be streaked".

He drew a long breath and opened the trunk and hung out her clothes and spoilables upon the wagon ribs.