no dream.

Supporting himself by the sideboard, he drew himself around to the
front, the only opening of the canvas room. He looked within. A
first look told him that the wagon was fitted up for a long journey,
and that its contents had not been disturbed by bandits or Indians.
The second look distinguished two objects that excluded from
attention all others. Upon a mattress at the rear of the wagon lay
a woman, her face covered by a cloth; and near the front seat stood
a keg of water. It was impossible to note the rigid form of the
woman and the position of the arms and hands without perceiving that
she was dead.

The man recognized this truth but it made only a dim impression;
that keg of water meant life--and life was a thousandfold more to
him than death. He drew himself upon the seat, snatched at the tin
cup beside the keg, and drew out the cloth-covered corn-cob that
stopped the flow. Having slaked his thirst, there was mingled with
his sense of ineffable content, an overwhelming desire for sleep.
He dropped on the second mattress, on which bedclothes were
carelessly strewn; his head found the empty pillow that lay indented
as it had been left by some vanished sleeper. As his eyelids
closed, he fell sound asleep. But for the rising and falling of his
powerful breast, he was as motionless as the body of the woman.

Without, the afternoon sun slowly sank behind the mountains casting
long shadows over the plains; the wind swirled the sand in tireless
eddies, sometimes lifting it high in great sheets, forming sudden
dunes; coyotes prowled among the foot-hills and out on the open
levels, squatting with eyes fixed on the wagon, uttering sharp quick