a single one of the party being competent to guide the little caravan
on the dangerous route.

From the Missouri the Trail was broad and plain enough for a child
to follow, but when they arrived at the Cimarron crossing of
the Arkansas, not a trace of former caravans was visible; nothing but
the innumerable buffalo-trails leading from everywhere to the river.

When the party entered the desert, or Dry Route, as it was years
afterward always, and very properly, called in certain seasons
of drought, the brave but too confident men discovered that the
whole region was burnt up. They wandered on for several days,
the horrors of death by thirst constantly confronting them.
Water must be had or they would all perish! At last Smith, in his
desperation, determined to follow one of the numerous buffalo-trails,
believing that it would conduct him to water of some character--
a lake or pool or even wallow. He left the train alone; asked for
no one to accompany him; for he was the very impersonation of courage,
one of the most fearless men that ever trapped in the mountains.

He walked on and on for miles, when, on ascending a little divide,
he saw a stream in the valley beneath him. It was the Cimarron,
and he hurried toward it to quench his intolerable thirst. When he
arrived at its bank, to his disappointment it was nothing but a bed
of sand; the sometime clear running river was perfectly dry.

Only for a moment was he staggered; he knew the character of many
streams in the West; that often their waters run under the ground
at a short distance from the surface, and in a moment he was on
his knees digging vigorously in the soft sand. Soon the coveted