Severe water shortage during the dry-plains expedition

The severe water shortage during the dry-plains expedition exposes the thin margin between a planned westward journey and a struggle for survival. Once Miller’s party leaves the Smoky Hill River, the flat, exposed plains provide few visible bearings and no dependable water. A canvas reservoir and the small amount of water left in a wooden barrel become essential supplies, while the condition of the oxen and horses makes every decision about rationing consequential. The ordeal also shows how the expedition’s forward motion depends on Miller’s confidence in a route that the landscape no longer confirms.

Leaving the river

The party prepares for the crossing beside the Smoky Hill River, where Miller fashions a large container from a square provisions tarp. Green branches hold its sides open; leather straps secure the frame, and cooking pots, kettles, and a wooden barrel help fill it. The improvised reservoir is about five feet wide and four feet high. The men spend nearly an hour filling it, then rest in the riverbank shade through the hottest part of the afternoon before setting out across the dry country.

The departure sharply changes their circumstances. The river’s green strip disappears behind them, and the open plain offers no tree, trail, or other landmark to guide them. William Andrews has to keep his eyes on Miller’s back to follow the direction of travel. By dusk the party has seen no interruption in the flat terrain, and it makes camp without a water source. The reservoir still contains enough for the animals to drink: Miller watches its level by lantern light and stops each ox in turn, while Charley Hoge leads the cattle and pushes their muzzles away. After the oxen and horses have drunk, about a quarter of the water remains.

The first waterless camp makes the shortage an immediate concern rather than a distant possibility. Fred Schneider objects to camping without water, and Miller acknowledges that the party must find more. He insists that water is somewhere nearby and says he must have missed it along the way. His calm assurance is accompanied by a plan to leave early, before the heat grows intense; it cannot, however, restore the landmarks or water sources the party has failed to find.

Losing the route and rationing the supply

At dawn the men resume the crossing, allowing the horses to choose their pace rather than forcing them before water is found. Miller rides ahead, scanning the ground and periodically dismounting to inspect it closely. They continue for half a day and beyond. When an ox stumbles and injures its companion with a blunt horn, Miller orders a halt. The men fill their canteens, then use the remaining reservoir water to water the oxen and allow the horses to drink. Miller breaks down the branch frame and gathers the water caught in the folds of the tarp into the wooden barrel.

Miller tries to explain away the missing water by saying that some landmarks have changed and that another half-day should put the party right. Schneider laughs and calls out the real danger: they are lost. Miller rejects that conclusion, pointing west and maintaining that if they keep to that direction they will find water by night or, at the latest, the next morning. The exchange marks a division in the group: Schneider voices the failure of their navigation, while Miller continues to treat the route as recoverable.

The water in the barrel becomes the measure of how little margin remains. When Charley Hoge brings Miller the barrel and his canteen, Miller carefully pours the canteens into it, holding each one upside down until the last drops fall. The collected water reaches only about four inches. Schneider hurls his empty canteen against the wagon and protests that the small supply is being wasted. The gesture turns their disagreement into a physical confrontation with scarcity: every drop has to be accounted for, but the party also has thirsty animals that cannot continue indefinitely without care.

Thirst in human and animal bodies

The men use what little water remains to moisten the oxen’s mouths. William Andrews and Schneider hold the animals by their horns while Miller lifts each upper lip and wets the stretched, hard flesh with a damp handkerchief. The oxen’s tongues are dark and swollen; the few drops fall onto them and are absorbed at once. Hoge brings one animal after another to the wagon, and the work takes nearly an hour. Andrews struggles to breathe the dry air and keep hold of the hot, smooth horns as his arms tremble. Schneider curses continuously, while Miller, exhausted and breathing heavily, says the animals should last until night and points to the roughly inch and a half of cloudy water still in the barrel.

The shortage also presses on the men, who are warned not to drink much of Charley Hoge’s whiskey, only enough to wet their throats. For William Andrews, the liquor burns his already dry tongue and throat, and even running his tongue over his cracked lips hurts. This relief is meagre and harsh, not a substitute for water. The plain remains empty on the horizon as the party carries on.

At sunset the oxen begin to groan again. Their tongues are so swollen that they walk with their mouths partly open, heads lowered and swaying. William Andrews and Schneider hold them by the horns once more, but now the animals are dazed and offer little resistance; they show almost no interest in the water Miller uses to wet their mouths. Miller decides not to stop, reasoning that they should keep moving while they can still stand. He wets the horses’ mouths with the last of the barrel water, and by the time he finishes, the handkerchief is nearly dry. The crisis is no longer only a matter of thirst: the animals’ deteriorating condition threatens the expedition’s ability to travel at all.

Finding signs of passage

The party continues across the plain, with Miller’s direction and the animals’ remaining strength carrying them toward the foothills. They encounter cattle tracks on a broad north–south trail, which Miller takes as evidence that herds are being driven up from Texas. Later that afternoon, William Andrews sees the parallel lines of a railroad cutting across the plain toward the first hills. Miller recognizes it first, dismounts, and runs his fingers along the steel rails before looking toward the mountains. The railroad is a human-made landmark where the crossing had offered almost none, but it does not immediately end the journey: Miller urges the others onward, and they travel for hours after dark.

The following morning, the route descends through hills into a valley and reaches a broad riverbed. The party has passed several clear streams during the night. These signs of water and the arrival at the river mark a change from the exposed plains, where the party had rationed its remaining supply and searched without reliable bearings. The account does not make the crossing a triumph of mastery over the land. Rather, the travelers’ advance depends on persistence, limited reserves, and the eventual appearance of water along their route.

Narrative significance

The episode makes navigation and bodily need inseparable. On the open plain, the landscape offers no obvious measure of distance or direction; even Miller’s confidence cannot make a missing water source appear. His repeated assurances sustain the expedition’s movement, but Schneider’s diagnosis that they are lost and the animals’ visible decline expose the limits of that confidence. The improvised tarp reservoir, the barrel’s dwindling contents, and the handkerchief used to wet swollen tongues give the danger its concrete scale.

For William Andrews, the crossing is also defined by repetition: travel, stop, ration, and resume. The men’s ordinary camp routines continue under increasingly abnormal conditions, while the plains remain difficult to distinguish from one another. The later railroad and river do not erase the earlier uncertainty; they show how abruptly a recognizable route and a source of water can re-enter a journey that, only hours before, seemed to offer neither. The shortage thus stands as a material test of the expedition’s plans and a reminder that forward motion across the frontier does not guarantee control of its conditions.