It was a dark line of thought but I always felt better when I got around to the determination, as I always did, to stand by my friends, their wives and children let come what might.
I could see with my glass the train of wagons moving slowly over the plain toward what looked to me like a large lake.

I made a guess of the point they would reach by night, and then took a straight course for it all day long in steady travel.

It was some time after dark, and I was still a quarter of a mile from the camp fires, where in the bed of a canon I stepped into some mud, which was a sign of water.

I poked around in the dark for a while and soon found a little pool of it, and having been without a drop of it for two days I lay down and took a hasty drink.

It did not seem to be very clear or clean, but it was certainly wet, which was the main thing just then.