heat can make a person crazy

 I took a lower branch of the creosote bush next to me, and rolled the sprig in my fingers. I love its "smell of rain." Thinking of the smell of rain made me thirsty. I remembered an old story, from the days that Captain Jack Hays, Bigfoot Wallace, and Robert Neighbors rode through West Texas trying to get an estimate of the population of Indians in the far western reaches of the new country (Texas.)  Captain Hays was also scouting for a road to El Paso, too. They had a doctor from Boston with them, a tenderfoot, not knowledgeable about self-sufficiency or proper behavior in hot arid climes.

After filling all available containers from the springs along the Middle Concho, the group headed west for Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing. The Doctor drank all of his water before the day was done. After a nap around sundown, the group continued the march into the night. The next morning, the Boston doctor was nowhere to be found. One of the Lipan Apache scouts rode back, but returned a few hours later with the doctor's clothes. He had found them draped over an allthorn bush, but no sign of the doctor. The dried buffalo grass, tobosa grass, and fluff grass had not revealed a trail.

Some ten months later the Boston doctor showed up in San Antonio, delivered by a group of Lipan Apaches. The doctor had no memory of what had happened to him and was a changed man. When brought back to San Antonio, he stayed in a dark room and cried. Sounds made him jump. One of the doctors of the town who had hosted him as a guest on the way west took him in after his return, and in an effort to "quiet his nerves" gave him laudanum. He did not improve, so finally arrangements were made to take him back to Boston.

I have wondered about the doctor, and have imagined different scenarios for what transpired. The source for the story indicated dehydration, exhaustion and possibly even heat stroke had destroyed the man.  Remembering the story brought the story of the lost buffalo soldiers between Tahoka Lake and Silver Lake. Four men died of dehydration in 1878, and in recent years Morton, Texas has honored their memory, inviting buffalo soldier re-enactors out during  their "Frontier Days" celebration.

I am sure there are other stories of people dying from the heat and lack of water on the Llano Estacado.  With almost no surface water and less than .0001 percent of the area having any trees (just pocket forests in the draws), the Llano Estacado was a tough place to cross in the summer before railroads and then finally roads for automobiles. 

I sniffed the creosote bush sprig I had been rolling, inhaled deeply, and waded into the heat again, headed back to the air conditioning  and a comfortable chair. People still get heatstroke, and sometimes take years to return to health, after all.