In the Red Beds of Texas 245 



tures curled up and blew away. We were camped 

 in Wagoner's great pasture, twenty-five miles wide 

 by fifty long, and I saw cattle die of thirst and star- 

 vation. Some had become so hungry that they had 

 eaten the prickly pear, spines and all, and their 

 mouths were full of putrefying sores where the 

 spines had worked out. 



The ground was hot, and the air like the breath of 

 a furnace ; and we had to haul all the water we used 

 in camp from six to twenty miles. To add to our 

 troubles, one of our horses, Baby, almost cut off her 

 foot in a wire fence while striking at the flies, 

 which, during the day, never ceased to torture man 

 and beast. Even at night the horned cattle were not 

 free from them, for they clustered around the base 

 of the horns, fifteen or twenty deep, like hives of 

 swarming bees, for rest. 



The country was indeed a desert and deserted. 

 All the people who had settled this valley on Coffee 

 Creek or other streams, had gone never to return; 

 the cowman had bought up all the homesteads. 

 The schoolhouse in which I had so often attended 

 worship had been moved from its foundations, and 

 the houses that had once echoed to the merry cries 

 of children, stood empty and desolate. 



How can I describe the hot winds, carrying on 

 their wings clouds of dust, which were so common 

 that year and the next? I once went to Godwin 



