The temperature is in the lOO's and surviving is so important that I could care less that this is the Santa Fe Trail or how many thousands of people came by here. Right now it rates only an apathetic glance. We're looking for water and all the windmills are shut off. Sometime in the afternoon we ride up to a once elegant but now deserted farmhouse which posseses a porch and bay windows. One of its inheritors, a huge owl, flies out of the livingroom.
Tall weeds grow in the yard and varmit tunnels undermine the foundation.
Behind is a pond of water and a stock tank. The tank is green and stagnant with a large, dead frog floating in it and another sharing his last days with the corpse. The horses sniff the water and turn away. We ride over to another tank and climb the windmill to turn it by hand and draw water, but it's useless. We return to the corral and the horses drink from the puddle.