They called it the Water Canyon. Desert-dwelling ponies tended not to go in for flowery place names and just got right to the point.
In the old days when earth ponies roamed the badlands, harnessed to wagons and carts with family marching alongside them, a place could bring water or salt or grass or food or shade or shelter or wood or nasty dangerous critters like Sand Hoppers, which could startle a traveller at ten paces. Pre-Appleloosan wanderers dragged their weary loads along the edge of the cliff overlooking the sliver of water far below, and so their desert-dry minds went for water and canyon and simply combined the two. Names like "Appleloosa" were what you came up with when nopony worried about where their next drink was coming from.
Not much water ran through the canyon. From the clifftop, a pony could kid themselves that the slither of brown a few miles straight down wasn't as small as it looked, but after a long meander down the path to the bottom, the weariest of travellers would take one look at the width before them and collapse into tears. Presumably this helped build up the water level.
From the canyon wall to the water itself was a lot of gravel, and a scraggly tree trying to suck what little light penetrated. Too much time in shadow had left its leaves shrivelled like ancient papyrus.
On the edge of the canyon overlooking the dead river, Braeburn the cowpony let the wind blow over his face. His eyes were closed, letting the vast San Palomino desert sooth his weary muscles. While his body relaxed, he concentrated on the thoughts racing through his mind.
It was early morning, and the ever-familiar orange hue of the desert was getting brighter. Silverstar had insisted on coming out early while the weather was still cool. Further along the canyon, the Sheriff was balancing a bucket across his back as he followed the edge of the canyon cliff, and eventually Braeburn hurried after him. He also bore buckets, which jangled and flopped either side of him as he cantered to keep up.
Salt was usually enough to keep a pony going through the worst of the dry season, but it was never a substitute for water, and the apple trees on the orchard still needed refreshment. Unfortunately, the search for flat, arable land and the Appleloosan's attempt to reduce costs building the train station meant that the town was a long way away from the river, and no plumbing and aqueduct system had yet been put in. The nearest watering hole still required a weekly journey some way into the San Palomino desert, a task entrusted to the Sheriff and whomever was brave enough to volunteer.
This week, it was Braeburn's turn. He didn't usually venture beyond the town and the orchard, so he stuck close to the Sheriff and kept looking around in case the sandstone leaped out at him.
"Sure is quiet out here," he said. His ears swivelled like frantic satellite dishes. If he hadn't been walking, he'd have pawed the ground nervously where he stood.
"That's the desert for you," said the Sheriff without looking round.
"I mean, I could guess from looking out from the town an' all, but bein' in it and with it all around... seems a mite open, if you get my drift. You could stand over at those dunes on the horizon, an' I could hear if you coughed."
"Purdy, ain't it?" The Sheriff peered down into the canyon. Whatever he saw didn't satisfy him, because he kept on walking. "If it wasn't for the Salt Block and its piano-ing all the time, I'd bet Appleloosa could be as peaceful as this."
Braeburn wasn't sure how to respond. At times like this, he wondered if the Sheriff was just playing with banter or being deadly serious. He seemed to switch effortlessly between the two.
Braeburn went back to his thoughts. Like this whole business with the buckets and the lake.
It was an old-timey practice. Every grown-up pony in Appleloosa had, at some point, gathered the water in this way at least once. Some had been regulars even before they had built the town, having come from towns with similar practices. Others had done it once and vowed never again. It was good for a walk, they said, but not really something they wanted to do often. Silverstar still chewed them out from time to time ("Them's lazy scroungers lookin' for an excuse, while we feed 'em up with the sweat in our fur an' the strain in our backs"), but as the overeager volunteers cancelled them out, and since they helped out in other ways, they were tolerated by everypony else.
Still, Braeburn wondered. Weren't there other ways to get water?
For instance, he'd received a letter from his Ponyville cousin a few months ago. They'd worked out some kind of newfangled irrigation system for Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight Sparkle, a friend of his cousin, had suggested it to her and even offered to test it out on a small portion of the south orchard if the Apple family were willing. It was simply a system of pipes and trenches, pumping vast volumes of water from the Ponyville reservoir and sending it along aisles of apple trees. A series of sprinklers could then be switched on and off just by using one wheel, and after that the water could be distributed across vast acres of the farm all at once, without expending much pony power. While expensive in the short-term, the system could last for years and easily make a good return on Applejack's investment.
Applejack's counterargument had been to point at Cloudsdale, where the pegasi were setting up a rain cloud.
After a little more talking, Twilight then went back to her library and wrote a short letter to Princess Celestia about the dangers of putting weather ponies out of a job with new technology, especially when one of them happened to be your friend.
It was agreed, on the whole, that the irrigation system was a bit of a bad idea.
However, out here in the desert, it could be put to good use. There were no regular pegasus teams out here to move the clouds around, since the schedule only required one long downpour in the three-month wet season followed by nine months of drought. At least, that was the theory. This month, the barrels and buckets of rainwater were as dry as the desert.
Applejack had been of the same mind. After sending back a letter to agree with her, Braeburn had gone to see the Sheriff about it in his office.
He felt his heart sink at the memory. The Sheriff, he knew, was a decent stallion. He'd sat on the other side of the desk, with his forelegs behind his head like arms and his shiny silver badge gleaming on his chest, and he'd listened as Braeburn explained how the irrigation system could cut down the risks and enable enough leftover pony power for an expansion of the orchard, if only they could make the nearby desert arable. Then, Braeburn stopped gesturing all over the place and sat back and waited.
Sheriff Silverstar's moustache peered back at him. The suntanned stallion adjusted his red neckerchief and let the chair fall back onto all its legs.
"We don't need an irrigation system," he said. "We got a decent set of hooves among us, and we know they work. You thought about if this thing don't work when we turn it on? How about how many bits it'll need? How many engineerin' experts have we got? How long'll it take? Will it last long enough to make a return? I'm sorry, Braeburn, but fancy wide-eyed gesticulatin' just ain't gonna cut it. Stick to what you know best, an' that's apple-farmin'."
"But Sheriff, ponies always get sick just before the rains come, an' it's always through lack of water. And we lose a ton of apples to the heatwave and the dust devils - just think how much it costs us and our family to replace 'em. This could fix those problems up a treat, an' my cousin's more than willin' to help us Appleloosan folk."
"I ain't sayin' no, you know. But right now it's a maybe, Braeburn, a maybe. An' you know how I feel about maybe's. Come back when you got a better proposal, but until then, I'm stickin' to what I know."
Apart from a drink of apple juice and some goodbyes before being shown the door, that had been that. At least, until Braeburn had sent a letter back to Applejack. He had yet to get her reply.
And now he was here, sticking to what he knew. Or rather, to what the Sheriff knew.
Silverstar stopped suddenly. Braeburn, unaware, walked into the back of him.
"Sh!" Silverstar hissed. He looked at a hole in the sand some way to his right. Several more holes could be seen dotted around this particular patch.
"What is it?" Braeburn whispered.
The Sheriff reached into one of his buckets, never taking his eyes off the nearest hole. When it emerged, a 44-inch red delicious apple pie came out with it. At the time, Braeburn had supposed it was for rations in case the journey took too long.
Silverstar threw the pie in a high arc. The pie reached its peak directly above the hole.
A silvery thread shot out like a javelin. It was so fast that Braeburn nearly jumped. It struck the pie's underside and whipped back down the hole.
Only the slight puff of dust as the pie whizzed down it showed that anything had happened at all.
"Just as I thought," muttered the Sheriff. "Spiderglass."
Braeburn's eyes were fixed on the dark glare where the pie had met its grisly end. "Huh?"
"Big eight-legged freaks made of pure glass. The desert heat makes their bodies red hot. Tain't normal to see them this far north, though."
"Reckon the drought's gettin' to them too?" said Braeburn.
"Can't tell. I sure ain't gonna ask."
The next sand dune suddenly seemed a long way off. Braeburn felt old pony instincts rising in his legs.
"Should we race past 'em?" he said.
"No. Just tread lightly an' we should be OK."
They stuck close to the edge of the canyon, never letting down a hoof without taking great care, never turning their back on the holes. There weren't that many of them - about thirty, Braeburn guessed - but both ponies refused to breathe easily until the two of them were past the next sand dune. The Sheriff and he wiped their brows with relief and walked on.
Eventually, Braeburn's thoughts drifted again.
No matter how he looked at it, the Sheriff had a point; Braeburn charged off into doing things he later regretted. Like that time when he'd tried to pass on the apple pie recipe to the neighbouring buffalo tribe. His reasoning to the buffalo had gone like this: you buffaloes became our friends because we gave you our delicious apple pies, right? But that's something we'd have to keep doin' day in, day out, right? So if we were to spare you the trouble by giving you the recipe, so's you can make apple pies whenever you liked, then you'd be even more grateful to us and our friendship will be stronger.
A lot of awkward shuffling had met this proposal. The wigwams had never been so quiet.
It might have worked, if the buffalo had possessed the earth ponies' cooking abilities. Or an oven. Or could read the cookbook.
The mountainous bulk that was Chief Thunderhooves simply shook his gigantic head and told a long and boring story about the ancient ways of preparing a meal, the feasts and rituals and ceremonies practised by long-dead ancestors for communal reasons, and how the buffalo would pretty much rather stick to what they knew, if you didn't mind, thank you very much.
Braeburn's face turned red at the memory of Little Strongheart stuffing a cloven hoof into her mouth, trying not to giggle. At least she followed him on his way back to town and apologized.
"I know you had good intentions," she'd said, "but it isn't the buffalo way. Besides, we don't know the first thing about cooking. Desert Grass only needs a bit of seasoning."
"Mare sakes, I was only tryin' to do a bit of good." He looked around the desert. "Say, I just had a thought. What do the buffalo do when it's near the rainy season?"
"We stampede," she said as though it were obvious.
It hadn't been the answer he'd hoped for, but he thanked her all the same.
Braeburn stumbled out of his memories as Silverstar held out a hoof. The reality of the San Palomino desert came back to him all of a sudden. The parchment-like feel of his skin under his wilting fur; the weight of the desert's baking air pressing down on him; the dryness of his mouth. He gathered his wits.
"We're here?" he said.
Sheriff Silverstar nodded his head and pointed down into the canyon.
"That's the lake. There's a path goin' down the side just here. Now watch where you tread. Palmer bust his hip when he put his hoof on the wrong place last week."
Braeburn watched as the Sheriff began the trek down the meandering path, which was cut into the side of the canyon by years of ponies going up and down its slope. He supposed the buffalo had originally used this path, as Appleloosa was only a year old and the path was too well-worn to have cropped up within a year. He found himself wondering about that before he shook the distracting thoughts out of his head.
"Come on, Braeburn," he said to himself. "Get back to earth."
The gold-haired stallion waited for all his senses to come back to him, and then sighed and followed the Sheriff down the well-trodden path.
