Morning found a dispirited camp, and no effort was made to get under way until it was too late to cover the twenty miles to the Cimarron Crossing that day, and rather than camp without water it was decided to lose a day here. It would be necessary to wait for the river to fall again before they would dare to attempt the crossing and the time might as well be spent here as farther on. The rain fell again that night and all the following day, but the wind was moderate. The river was being watched closely and it was found that it had risen four feet since they reached The Caches; but this was nothing unusual, for, like most prairie streams, the Arkansas rose quickly until its low banks were overflowed, when the loss of volume by the flooding of so much country checked it appreciably; and its fall, once the rains ceased, would be as rapid. High water was not the only consideration in regard to the fording of the river, for the soft bottom, disturbed by the strong current, soon lost what little firmness it had along this part of the great bend, and became treacherous with quicksand. That it was not true quicksand made but little difference so long as it mired teams and wagons. Another argument now was begun. There were several fords of the Arkansas between this point and the mountains; and there were two routes from here on, the shorter way across the dry plain of the Cimarron, as direct as any unsurveyed trail could be, and the longer, more roundabout way leading another hundred miles farther up the river and crossing it not far from Bent's Fort, over a pebbly and splendid ford. From here it turned south along the divide between Apishara Creek and the Purgatoire River, climbed over the mountain range through Raton Pass, and joined the more direct trail near Santa Clara Spring under the shadow of the Wagon Mound. Beside the ford above Bent's Fort there was another, about thirty miles above The Caches, which crossed the river near Chouteau's Island. Each ford and each way had its adherents, but after great argument and wrangling the Dry Route was decided upon, its friends not only proving the wisdom of taking the shorter route, but also claimed that the unpleasantness of the miles of dry traveling was no worse than the rough and perilous road over Raton Pass, where almost any kind of an accident could happen to a wagon and where, if the caravan were attacked by Utes or Apaches before it reached the mountain pasture near the top, they would be caught in a strung-out condition and corralling would be impossible. The danger from a possible ambush and from rocks rolled down from above, in themselves, were worse than the desert stretch of the shorter route.