CHAPTER XXXII.
"OLE BOO," AND "OLE SOL, THE HAYMAKER"-- A FETID, BURNING DESERT--NOISOME WATER, AND THE EFFECTS OF DRINKING IT--STEALING SOFT SOAP.
The gradually lengthening Summer days were insufferably long and wearisome.

Each was hotter, longer and more tedious than its predecessors.

In my company was a none-too-bright fellow, named Dawson.
During the chilly rains or the nipping, winds of our first days in prison, Dawson would, as he rose in, the morning, survey the forbidding skies with lack-luster eyes and remark, oracularly: "Well, Ole Boo gits us agin, to-day." He was so unvarying in this salutation to the morn that his designation of disagreeable weather as "Ole Boo" became generally adopted by us.
When the hot weather came on, Dawson's remark, upon rising and seeing excellent prospects for a scorcher, changed to: "Well, Ole Sol, the Haymaker, is going to git in his work on us agin to-day." As long as he lived and was able to talk, this was Dawson's invariable observation at the break of day.
He was quite right.

The Ole Haymaker would do some famous work before he descended in the West, sending his level rays through the wide interstices between the somber pines.
By nine o'clock in the morning his beams would begin to fairly singe everything in the crowded pen.

The hot sand would glow as one sees it in the center of the unshaded highway some scorching noon in August.