Reaching the place where he had been ordered to turn around, a reluctant Ali halted Ben Akbar. For a moment he sat the saddle, searching everything still ahead and hoping desperately to see a splash of green that must mark an oasis. He saw only more desert. The last feeble spark of hope almost flickered out.
Then, suddenly, it flared. Though Lieutenant Beale had told him when he must return, he had not said that Ali must come back by the same route. Some distance to the south was a series of rocky ridges from whose crests it would surely be possible to see much new country. Ali swung south.
With a much clearer understanding of the expedition's true purpose, Ali lauded the wisdom that had prompted it. If some of this Southwest was bleak and forbidding, some was as fine and rich as anything Ali had ever seen. Villages and even cities might thrive here and there would still be ample grazing for flocks and herds.
Almost without exception, however, the few white men who had dared enter the region cared for nothing except high adventure and possible riches, with high adventure accorded a definite priority. Far from taming the wilderness, they much preferred it untamed. Their opposites, who would bring settlement and civilization, must first be provided with some means of access. Though the wild men could live by their rifles and from their saddlebags, families could not.
Following the 35th parallel, except wherever circumstance, such as terrain unsuited for wagons, made it wise to deviate from that line, the expedition was to lay out a wagon road between Fort Defiance and the California border. Besides opening new country, the road would close the final gap in a transcontinental highway.
Ali, who knew something about roads, had only unstinted admiration for the course so far. That camels could travel it was not open to question, for camels were breaking the trail. Lieutenant Beale, however, was choosing the route so carefully and with such skill that the heaviest and clumsiest wagons could hereafter follow where the camels led.
It was an admirable road, and the fact that the entire expedition was lost at the moment would be of no consequence if it were not for lack of water. Even that would be no more than a minor annoyance, except that horses and mules must drink or find it impossible to go on.