Free Education Of a Wandering Man (1990) by Louis L'amour Page B

an hour, and after a good long drink at the Owl Holes, I started down that road to the southwest, walking steadily.
    It was a few minutes after six when I left the Owl Holes. I was guessing I could continue walking until ten o'clock, when it would be wise to find shade, if any, and wait out the day. In walking west I knew I would be walking parallel to the road that ran east, but cutting across country is dangerous, as one has no idea how many gullies one will have to climb into and out of. I held to the trail and the tracks of the old man's car.
    It was flat desert, scattered with rocks and creosote. When I reached the turning point, I was feeling good and checked my time. The sky above was impossibly blue but that would not be for long. Soon the heat would turn it to brassy white and the sand beneath my feet would grow hot. I knew that temperatures at this time of year could run well over one hundred degrees in the shade, and there was no shade.
    I did not worry. I did not think. I simply walked, putting one foot ahead of the other and holding my destination in mind.
    Soon I would have the Granite Mountains to my south and the Avawatz to the north, both well back from the road on which I walked. The tracks of the old man's car, coming and going, were plainly visible. There were no other tracks.
    Desert nights are cold, but with the coming of day the cold disappears quickly and the heat is with you until sundown.
    My shirt was soaked with sweat from walking but it had a pleasant, cooling effect. At the point where I must turn to the footpath that led to Drinkwater Spring, I hesitated. Leaving a known road is always a risk, and moreover, if the old man was driving out today, he might well pass by while I was off the road.
    Nevertheless, the water was there and I needed water, desperately. As near as I could figure, the cutoff must be eight or nine miles until it intersected with the road on which I was traveling.
    My situation was serious. I had no means by which to carry water, and irritably I thought back to so many movies where, when a canteen is empty, it is thrown away. I can think of nothing more incredibly stupid. If the man comes upon water, how will he carry it? Yet the scene is repeated over and over.
    It was after eleven before I reached water. It was a small pipe leading from the spring to a trough in an old corral. Cupping my hands, I drank, and drank again. Then I splashed water on my face and on my shirt. The old cabin was not far off and I walked over, dropping down in the shade.
    Grateful for the respite, I leaned my head back and slept. It was all of an hour before I awakened, and then only to move into deeper shade. After a bit I walked to the pipe from the spring and soaked up some more water.
    Some blue quail came out of the brush and gathered around water trickling from the trough, and later a jack rabbit hopped slowly by, unaware of me, and obviously unafraid.
    I slept again, awakened, drank, then dozed for a while. From time to time I glanced at my watch. I would wait until four, I told myself. If possible, I wanted to be back on the familiar road while it was still light. Otherwise I might miss it entirely.
    At a rough guess I had covered something more than twenty miles that morning, but the worst stretch would be at the end.
    Thinking of that, I bathed my feet in cool water from the trough, dried them, and prepared myself to move out. I had far to go and was impatient to get on with it. Despite that fact, I enjoyed my brief stop at Drinkwater Spring, and am sure had I stopped the night I would have seen some bighorns, for their tracks were all about.
    Obviously they watered here.
    Beckoning signs invited me down all sorts of roads. The signs to Randsburg made me hesitate. Was it close? But when I got there I would still be far from Barstow, where my payoff awaited me. Of course, I might hitch a ride into Barstow. Yet the only road I knew and the only one I could be sure of was the one I was