Chapter II: Part 2

During the descent of the River of Doubt in Brazil there were many black moments. It was impossible to hazard a guess within a month or more as to when we would get through to the Amazon. We had dugout canoes, and when we came to serious rapids or waterfalls we were forced to cut a trail around to the quiet water below. Then we must make a corduroy road with the trunks of trees over which to haul the dugouts. All this took a long time, and in some places where the river ran through gorges it was almost impossible. We lost in all six of the ten canoes with which we started, and of course much of our food-supply and general equipment. It was necessary to delay and build two more canoes--a doubly laborious task because of the axes and adzes which had gone down in the shipwrecks. The Brazil nuts upon which we had been counting to help out our food-supply had had an off year. If this had not been so we would have fared by no means badly, for these nuts may be ground into flour or roasted or prepared in a number of different ways. Another source upon which we counted failed us when we found that there were scarcely any fish in the river. For some inexplicable reason many of the tributaries of the Amazon teem with fish, while others flowing through similar country and under parallel conditions contain practically none. We went first onto half rations, and then were forced to still further reduce the issue. We had only the clothes in which we stood and were wet all day and slept wet throughout the night. There would be a heavy downpour, then out would come the sun and we would be steamed dry, only to be drenched once more a half-hour later.

Working waist-deep in the water in an attempt to dislodge a canoe that had been thrown upon some rocks out in the stream, father slipped, and, of course, it was his weak leg that suffered. Then he came down with fever, and in his weakened condition was attacked with a veritable plague of deep abscesses. It can be readily understood that the entourage and environment were about as unsuitable for a sick man as any that could be imagined. Nothing but father’s indomitable spirit brought him through. He was not to be downed by anything, although he knew well that the chances were against his coming out. He made up his mind that as long as he could, he would go along, but that once he could no longer travel, and held up the expedition, he would arrange for us to go on without him. Of course he did not at the time tell us this, but he reasoned that with our very limited supply of provisions, and the impossibility of living on the country, if the expedition halted it would not only be of no avail as far as he was concerned, but the chances would be strongly in favor of no one coming through. With it all he was invariably cheerful, and in the blackest times ever ready with a joke. Sick as he was, he gave no one any trouble. He would walk slowly over the portages, resting every little while, and when the fever was not too severe we would, when we reached the farther end with the canoes, find him sitting propped against a tree reading a volume of Gibbon, or perhaps the Oxford book of verse.

There was one particularly black night; one of our best men had been shot and killed by a useless devil who escaped into the jungle, where he was undoubtedly killed by the Indians. We had been working through a series of rapids that seemed interminable. There would be a long carry, a mile or so clear going, and then more rapids. The fever was high and father was out of his head. Doctor Cajazeira, who was one of the three Brazilians with us, divided with me the watch during the night. The scene is vivid before me. The black rushing river with the great trees towering high above along the bank; the sodden earth under foot; for a few moments the stars would be shining, and then the sky would cloud over and the rain would fall in torrents, shutting out sky and trees and river. Father first began with poetry; over and over again he repeated “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,” then he started talking at random, but gradually he centred down to the question of supplies, which was, of course, occupying every one’s mind. Part of the time he knew that I was there, and he would then ask me if I thought Cherrie had had enough to eat to keep going. Then he would forget my presence and keep saying to himself: “I can’t work now, so I don’t need much food, but he and Cherrie have worked all day with the canoes, they must have part of mine.” Then he would again realize my presence and question me as to just how much Cherrie had had. How good faithful Cajazeira waked I do not know, but when his watch was due I felt him tap me on the shoulder, and crawled into my soggy hammock to sleep the sleep of the dead.

Father’s courage was an inspiration never to be forgotten by any of us; without a murmur he would lie while Cajazeira lanced and drained the abscesses. When we got down beyond the rapids the river widened so that instead of seeing the sun through the canyon of the trees for but a few hours each day, it hung above us all the day like a molten ball and broiled us as if the river were a grid on which we were made fast. To a sick man it must have been intolerable.

It is when one is sick that one really longs for home. Lying in a hammock all unwashed and unshaven, suffocating beneath a mosquito-net, or tortured by mosquitoes and sand-flies when one raises the net to let in a breath of air--it is then that one dreams of clean pajamas and cool sheets and iced water. I have often heard father say when he was having a bout of fever at home, that it was almost a pleasure to be ill, particularly when you thought of all the past discomforts of fever in the wilds.

Father’s disappointment at not being able to take a physical part in the war--as he has said, “to pay with his body for his soul’s desire”--was bitter. Strongly as he felt about going, I doubt if his disappointment was much more keen than that of the British and French statesmen and generals, who so readily realized what his presence would mean to the Allied cause, and more than once requested in Washington that he be sent. Marshal Joffre made such a request in person, meeting with the usual evasive reply. Father took his disappointment as he had taken many another in his life, without letting it harm his usefulness, or discourage his aggressive energy. “In the fell clutch of circumstance he did not wince or cry aloud.” Indeed, the whole of Henley’s poem might well apply to father if it were possible to eliminate from it the unfortunate marring undercurrent of braggadocio with which father’s attitude was never for an instant tinged. With the indomitable courage that knew no deterrent he continued to fight his battle on this side to make America’s entry no empty action, as it threatened to be. He wrote me that he had hoped that I would be with him in this greatest adventure of all, but that since it was not to be, he could only be thankful that his four boys were permitted to do their part in the actual fighting.

When in a little town in Germany my brother and I got news of my father’s death, there kept running through my head with monotonous insistency Kipling’s lines:

“He scarce had need to doff his pride,
Or slough the dress of earth,
E’en as he trod that day to God
So walked he from his birth,
In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth.”

That was my father, to whose comradeship and guidance so many of us look forward in the Happy Hunting-Grounds.

II

In Quest of Sable Antelope

II

IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE

It was a bright, sunny day toward the end of October, and I was walking along the streets of the old Portuguese town of Mombasa on the east coast of Equatorial Africa. Behind me, in ragged formation, marched some twenty-five blacks, all but four of them with loads on their heads; the four were my personal “boys,” two gun-bearers, a cook, and a tent-boy. They were scattered among the crowd, hurrying up those that tried to lag behind for a last farewell to the wives and sweethearts who were following along on either side, clad in the dark-blue or more gaudily colored sheets that served them for clothes.

At length our heterogeneous assembly reached the white sands of the harbor, and amid much confusion we stowed away into a couple of long, broad dugouts and were ferried out to a dhow that lay moored not far from the shore. We set sail amid the shrill cries of the women and a crowd of small children who, on our approach, had scurried out of the water like so many black monitor lizards.

We steered out across the bay toward a headland some two miles distant. There was just enough breeze to ruffle the water, but the dhow sped along at a rate that belied appearances. Sprawling among their loads the men lit cigarettes and chatted and joked, talking of the prospects of the trip, or the recent gossip of Mombasa. The sailors, not knowing that I understood Swahili, began to discuss me in loud tones. An awkward silence fell upon the porters, who didn’t quite know how to tell them. Mali, my tent-boy, who was sitting near me, looked toward me and smiled. When the discussion became a little too personal, I turned to him and made a few pertinent remarks about the crew. The porters grinned delightedly, and rarely have I seen more shamefaced men than those sailors.

In far too short a time for all of us the dhow grounded on the other side and we jumped out and started to unload. A giant baobab-tree stood near the beach; a cluster of huts beneath it were occupied by some Swahilis who fished, and ran a small store, where my porters laid in a final supply of delicacies--sugar and tobacco.

It is customary to have a native head man, but on this short trip I had decided to do without one, for though the porters were new, my personal boys were old friends. Accordingly, when all the loads were ready and neatly arranged in line, I shouted “Bandika!” Great muscular black arms caught the packs and swung them up into place on the head, and off we started, along the old coast trail, worn deep with the traffic of centuries, and leading on for several hundred miles with native villages strung along its length. Behind me strode my two gun boys, then came the porters, all in single file, their present regular order a strong contrast with our disordered progress through the streets of Mombasa. Mali and Kombo, the cook, brought up the rear to look out for stragglers, and help unfortunates to rearrange their loads more comfortably.

A little way from the shore we passed an old Arab well; some women were drawing water from it, but at our approach they deserted their earthen jars and hurried away with shrill ejaculations. Fresh from the more arid interior, I imagined that the men would fill their gourds, but they filed past without stopping, for this was a land of many streams.

We continued on our way silently, now through stretches of sandy land covered with stunted bushes, now through native shambas, or cultivated fields, until we came upon a group of natives seated under a gigantic wide-spreading tree. It was a roadside shop, and the porters threw down their loads and shouldered their way to where the shopkeeper was squatting behind his wares--nuts, tobacco, tea, bits of brass wire, beads, and sweetmeats of a somewhat gruesome appearance. He was a striking-looking old fellow with a short gray beard. Pretty soon he came to where I was sitting with a measure of nuts for the white man; so in return I took out my tobacco-pouch and presented him with some of the white man’s tobacco.

After a few minutes’ rest we set out again and marched along for some time until we came to a cocoanut-palm grove, where I decided to camp for the night. The natives we were among were called the WaNyika--the “children of the wilderness.”

Leaving the men to arrange camp under the supervision of the gun-bearers, I strolled over to a nearby village where there was a dance in full swing. The men were regaling themselves with cocoanut-wine, an evil-tasting liquid, made from fermented cocoanut-milk, they told me. The moon, almost at full, was rising when I returned to camp, and after supper I sat and smoked and watched “the night and the palms in the moonlight,” until the local chief, or Sultani, as they called him, came up and presented me with some ripe cocoanuts, and sitting down on the ground beside me he puffed away at his long clay pipe, coughing and choking over the strong tobacco I had given him, but apparently enjoying it all immensely. When he left I remained alone, unable for some time to make up my mind to go to bed, such was the spell of the tropic moonlight and the distant half-heard songs of the dancing “children of the wilderness.”

Early next morning we were on our way, and that night were camped a few hundred yards from the village of a grizzled old Sultani, whose domains lay in the heart of the sable country, for it was in search of these handsome antelopes that I had come. In southern Africa the adult males of the species are almost black, with white bellies, but here they were not so dark in color, resembling more nearly the southern female sable, which is a dark reddish brown. Both sexes carry long horns that sweep back in a graceful curve over the shoulders, those of the male much heavier and longer, sometimes, in the south, attaining five feet in length. The sable antelope is a savage animal, and when provoked, will attack man or beast. The rapier-like horns prove an effective weapon as many a dog has learned to its cost.

My tent was pitched beneath one of the large shade-trees in which the country abounds. This one was the village council-tree, and when I arrived the old men were seated beneath it on little wooden stools. These were each hacked out of a single log and were only five or six inches high. The owner carried his stool with him wherever he went, slinging it over his shoulder on a bit of rawhide or a chain.

There was trouble in the village, for after the first formal greetings were over the old chief told me that one of his sons had just died. There was about to be held a dance in his memory, and he led me over to watch it. We arrived just as the ceremony was starting. Only small boys were taking part in it, and it was anything but a mournful affair, for each boy had strung round his ankles baskets filled with pebbles that rattled in time with the rhythm of the dance. In piping soprano they sang a lively air which, unlike any native music I had hitherto heard, sounded distinctly European, and would scarcely have been out of place in a comic opera.

When the dance was finished the Sultani came back with me to my tent, and sitting down on his stool beside me, we gossiped until I was ready to go to bed. I had given him a gorgeous green umbrella and a most meritorious knife, promising him further presents should success attend me in the chase. He, in addition to the customary cocoanuts, had presented me with some chickens and a large supply of a carrot-shaped root called mihogo; by no means a bad substitute for potatoes, and eaten either raw or cooked; having in the former state a slight chestnut flavor.

The first day’s hunting was a blank, for although we climbed hill after hill and searched the country with my spy-glasses, we saw nothing but some kongoni (hartebeeste), and I had no intention of risking disturbing the country by shooting at them, much as the men would have liked the meat. It was the rainy season, and we were continually getting drenched by showers, but between times the sun would appear and in an incredibly short time we would be dry again. The Sultani had given me two guides, sturdy, cheerful fellows with no idea of hunting, but knowing the country well, which was all we wanted. We loaded them down with cocoanuts, for in the middle of the day when one was feeling tired and hot it was most refreshing to cut a hole in a cocoanut and drink the milk, eating the meat afterward.

The following day we made a very early start, leaving camp amid a veritable tropical downpour. For half an hour we threaded our way through the semi-cultivated native shambas; the rain soon stopped, the sun rose, and we followed an overgrown trail through a jungle of glistening leaves. Climbing a large hill, we sat down among some rocks to reconnoitre. Just as I was lighting my pipe I saw Juma Yohari, one of my gun-bearers, motioning excitedly. I crept over to him and he pointed out, three-quarters of a mile away, a small band of sable crossing a little open space between two thickets. The country was difficult to hunt, for it was so furrowed with valleys, down the most of which there ran streams, that there was very little level land, and that little was in the main bush country--the Bara, as the natives called it. There were, however, occasional open stretches, but during the rainy season, as at present, the grass was so high everywhere that it was difficult to find game. We held a hurried consultation, Juma, Kasitura--my other gun-bearer--and myself; after a short disagreement we decided upon the course, and set out as fast as we safely could toward the point agreed on. It was exhausting work: through ravines, up hills, all amid a tangle of vines and thorns; and once among the valleys it was hard to know just where we were. When we reached what we felt was the spot we had aimed at, we could find no trace of our quarry, though we searched stealthily in all directions. I led the way toward a cluster of tall palms that were surrounded by dense undergrowth. A slight wind rose, and as I entered the thicket with every nerve tense, I heard a loud and most disconcerting crackle that caused me to jump back on to Yohari, who was close behind me. He grinned and pointed to some great dead palm-leaves pendant along the trunk of one of the trees that the wind had set in motion. The next instant I caught sight of a pair of horns moving through the brush. On making out the general outline of the body, I fired. Another antelope that I had not seen made off, and taking it for a female I again fired, bringing it down with a most lucky shot. I had hoped to collect male, female, and young for the museum, so I was overjoyed, believing that I had on the second day’s hunting managed to get the two adults. Yohari and Kasitura thought the same, but when we reached our quarry we found them to be both males; the latter a young one, and the former, although full grown in body, by no means the tawny black color of an old bull. We set to work on the skins, and soon had them off. Juma took one of the Shenzies[2] and went back to camp with the skins, while Kasitura and I went on with the other. We returned to camp by moonlight that night without having seen any more game. The porters had gone out and brought in the meat and there was a grand feast in progress.

After some antelope-steak and a couple of cups of tea I tumbled into bed and was soon sound asleep. The next thing I knew I was wide awake, feeling as if there were fourscore pincers at work on me. Bounding out of bed, I ran for the camp-fire, which was still flickering. I was covered with ants. They had apparently attacked the boys sleeping near me at about the same time, for the camp was in an uproar and there was a hurrying of black figures, and a torrent of angry Swahili imprecations. There was nothing for it but to beat an ignominious retreat, and we fled in confusion. Once out of reach of reinforcements we soon ridded ourselves of such of our adversaries as were still on us. Fortunately for us the assault had taken place not long before dawn, and we returned to camp safely by daylight.

That day we moved camp to the top of a neighboring hill, about a mile from the village. I spent the morning working over the skins which I had only roughly salted the night before; but in the afternoon we sallied forth again to the hunt.

We went through several unsuccessful days before I again came up with sable. Several times we had met with fresh tracks, and in each case Kasitura, who was a strapping Basoga from a tribe far inland and an excellent tracker, took up the trail and did admirable work. The country was invariably so dense and the game so wary that in spite of Kasitura’s remarkable tracking, only on two occasions did we sight the quarry, and each time it was only a fleeting glimpse as they crashed off. I could have had a shot, but I was anxious not to kill anything more save a full-grown female or an old master bull; and it was impossible to determine either sex or age.

On what was to be our last day’s hunting we made a particularly early start and pushed on and on through the wild bushland, stopping occasionally to spy round from some vantage-point. We would swelter up a hill, down into the next valley among the lovely tall trees that lined the brook, cross the cool, rock-strewn stream, and on again. The sable fed in the open only in the very early morning till about nine o’clock, then they would retreat into the thickets and doze until four or five in the afternoon, when they would again come out to feed. During the intervening time our only chance was to run across them by luck, or find fresh tracks to follow. On that particular day we climbed a high hill about noon to take a look round and have a couple of hours’ siesta. I found a shady tree and sat down with my back against the trunk. Ten miles or so away sparkled and shimmered the Indian Ocean. On all sides stretched the wonderful bushland, here and there in the distance broken by little patches of half-cultivated land. There had been a rain-storm in the morning, but now the sun was shining undimmed. Taking from my hunting-coat pocket Borrow’s _Wild Wales_, I was soon climbing far-distant Snowdon with Lavengro, and was only brought back to realities by Juma, who came up to discuss the afternoon’s campaign. We had scarcely begun when one of the Shenzies, whom I had sent to watch from a neighboring hill, came up in great excitement to say that he had found a large sable bull. We hurried along after him, and presently he pointed to a thicket ahead of us. Leaving the rest behind, Juma and I proceeded cautiously toward the thicket. We found two sable cows, which Juma felt sure were all that there were in the thicket, whereas I could not help putting some faith in the Shenzi who had been very insistent about the “big bull.” I was convinced at length that Juma was right, so I took aim at the better of the cows. My shooting was poor, for I only crippled her, and when I moved up close for a final shot she attempted to charge, snorting savagely, but too badly hit to cause any trouble.

We had spent some time searching for the bull, so that by the time we had the skin off, the brief African twilight was upon us. We had been hunting very hard for the last week, and were all of us somewhat fagged, but as we started toward camp I soon forgot my weariness in the magic of the night. Before the moon rose we trooped silently along, no one speaking, but all listening to the strange noises of the wilderness. We were following a rambling native trail, which wound along a deep valley beside a stream for some time before it struck out across the hills for camp. There was but little game in the country, still occasionally we would hear a buck that had winded us crashing off, or some animal splashing across the stream. In the more open country the noise of the cicadas, loud and incessant, took me back to the sound of the katydids in summer nights on Long Island. The moon rose large and round, outlining the tall ivory-nut palms. It was as if we were marching in fairyland, and with real regret I at length caught the gleam of the camp-fire through the trees.

It was after ten o’clock, when we had had something to eat, but Juma, Kasitura, and I gathered to work on the sable, and toiled until we began to nod off to sleep as we skinned.

Next morning I paid my last visit to the old Sultani, rewarding him as I had promised and solemnly agreeing to come back and live with him in his country. The porters were joyful, as is always the case when they are headed for Mombasa. Each thought of the joyous time he would have spending his earnings, and they sang in unison as they swung along the trail--careless, happy children. I, too, was in the best of spirits, for my quest had been successful, and I was not returning empty-handed.

III

The Sheep of the Desert

III

THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT

I wished to hunt the mountain-sheep of the Mexican desert, hoping to be able to get a series needed by the National Museum.

At Yuma, on the Colorado River, in the extreme southwestern corner of Arizona, I gathered my outfit. Doctor Carl Lumholtz, the explorer, had recently been travelling and hunting in that part of Mexico. In addition to much valuable help as to outfitting, he told me how to get hold of a Mexican who had been with him and whom he had found trustworthy. The postmaster, Mr. Chandler, and Mr. Verdugo, a prominent business man, had both been more than kind in helping in every possible way. Mr. Charles Utting, clerk of the District Court, sometime Rough Rider, and inveterate prospector, was to start off with me for a short holiday from judicial duties. To him the desert was an open book, and from long experience he understood all the methods and needs of desert travel. Mr. Win Proebstel, ranchman and prospector, was also to start with us. He had shot mountain-sheep all the way from Alaska to Mexico, and was a mine of first-hand information as to their habits and seasons. I had engaged two Mexicans, Cipriano Dominguez and Eustacio Casares.

On the afternoon of the 10th of August we reached Wellton, a little station on the Southern Pacific, some forty miles east of Yuma. Win and his brother, Ike Proebstel, were ready with a wagon, which the latter was to drive to a water-hole some sixteen miles south, near some mining claims of Win’s. August is the hottest month in the year in that country, a time when on the desert plains of Sonora the thermometer marks 140 degrees; so we decided to take advantage of a glorious full moon and make our first march by night. We loaded as much as we could of our outfit into the wagon, so as to save our riding and pack animals. We started at nine in the evening. The moon rode high. At first the desert stretched in unbroken monotony on all sides, to the dim and far-off mountains. In a couple of hours we came to the country of the saguaro, the giant cactus. All around us, their shafts forty or fifty feet high, with occasional branches set at grotesque angles to the trunk, they rose from the level floor of the desert, ghostly in the moonlight. The air seemed cool in comparison with the heat of the day, though the ground was still warm to the touch.

Shortly before one in the morning we reached Win’s water-hole--tank, in the parlance of the country--and were soon stretched out on our blankets, fast asleep.

Next day we loaded our outfit on our two pack-mules and struck out across the desert for the Tinajas Altas (High Tanks), which lay on the slopes of a distant range of mountains, about four miles from the Mexican border. For generations these tanks have been a well-known stepping-stone in crossing the desert. There are a series of them, worn out in the solid rock and extending up a cleft in the mountainside, which, in time of rain, becomes the course of a torrent. The usual camping-place is a small plateau, a couple of hundred yards from the lowest tank. This plateau lies in a gulch and is sheltered on either hand by its steep and barren sides. A few hundred feet from the entrance, on the desert and scattered about among the cactus, lie some hundred and fifty graves--the graves of men who have died of thirst; for this is a grim land, and death dogs the footsteps of those who cross it. Most of the dead men were Mexicans who had struggled across the deserts only to find the tanks dry. Each lay where he fell, until, sooner or later, some other traveller found him and scooped out for him a shallow grave, and on it laid a pile of rocks in the shape of a rude cross. Forty-six unfortunates perished here at one time of thirst. They were making their way across the deserts to the United States, and were in the last stages of exhaustion for lack of water when they reached these tanks. But a Mexican outlaw named Blanco reached the tanks ahead of them and bailed out the water, after carefully laying in a store for himself not far away. By this cache he waited until he felt sure that his victims were dead; he then returned to the tanks, gathered the possessions of the dead, and safely made his escape.

A couple of months previously a band of insurrectos had been camped by these tanks, and two newly made graves marked their contribution. The men had been killed in a brawl.

Utting told us of an adventure that took place here, a few years ago, which very nearly had a tragic termination. It was in the winter season and there was an American camped at the tanks, when two Mexicans came there on their way to the Tule tanks, twenty-five miles away, near which they intended to do some prospecting. Forty-eight hours after they had left, one of them turned up riding their pack-mule and in a bad way for water. He said that they had found the Tule tanks dry, but had resolved to have one day’s prospecting anyway; they had separated, but agreed at what time they were to meet. Although he waited for a long while after the agreed time, his companion never appeared, and he was forced to start back alone.

Twenty-four hours after the return of this Mexican, the American was awakened in the night by hearing strange sounds in the bed of the arroyo. When he went down to investigate them he found the lost Mexican; he was in a fearful condition, totally out of his head, and was vainly struggling to crawl up the bank of the arroyo, in order to make the last hundred yards across the plateau to the water-hole. He would never have reached it alone. By careful treatment the American brought him round and then listened to his story. He had lost himself when he went off prospecting, and when he finally got his bearings he was already in a very bad way for water. Those dwelling in cool, well-watered regions can hardly make themselves realize what thirst means in that burning desert. He knew that although there was no water in the Tule wells, there was some damp mud in the bottom, and he said that all he wished to do was to reach the wells and cool himself off in the mud before he died. A short distance from the tanks the trail he was following divided, one branch leading to the Tule wells and the other back to the Tinajas Altas, twenty-five miles away. The Mexican was so crazed that he took the wrong branch, and before he realized his mistake he had gone some way past Tule; he then decided that it was the hand of providence that had led him past, and that he must try to make Tinajas Altas; a feat which he would have just missed accomplishing but for the American encamped there.

The morning after we reached the tanks, the Tinah’alta, as they are called colloquially, Win and I were up and off for the hunting-grounds by half past three; by sun-up we were across the border, and hunted along the foot of the mountains, climbing across the out-jutting ridges. At about nine we reached the top of a ridge and began looking around. Win called to me that he saw some sheep. We didn’t manage things very skilfully, and the sheep took fright, but as they stopped I shot at a fine ram, Win’s rifle echoing my shot. We neither of us scored a hit, and missed several running shots. This missing was mere bad luck on Win’s part, for he was a crack shot, and later on that day, when we were not together, he shot a ram, only part of which was visible, at a distance of three hundred and fifty yards. As the sun grew hotter we hunted farther up on the mountains, but we saw no more sheep, and returned to camp with Utting, who met us at a ravine near the border.

After we got back to camp, Win and I filled some canteens, threw our blankets on one of the pack-mules, took Dominguez, and rode back over the border to camp in the dry bed of an arroyo near where we had been hunting in the morning. We sent back the animals, arranging with Dominguez to return with them the following day. Next morning at a little after three we rolled out of our blankets, built a little fire of mesquite wood, and after a steaming cup of coffee and some cold frying-pan bread we shouldered our rifles and set out. At the end of several hours’ steady walking I got a chance at a fair ram and missed. I sat down and took out my field-glasses to try to see where he went; and I soon picked up three sheep standing on a great boulder, near the foot of a mountain of the same range that we were on. They were watching us and were all ewes, but I wanted one for the museum. So I waited till they lost interest in us, got down from the rock, and disappeared from our sight. I then left Win and started toward the boulder; after some rather careful stalking I got one of them at about two hundred yards by some fairly creditable shooting. The side of the mountain range along which we were hunting was cut by numerous deep gullies from two to three hundred yards across. After I had dressed the ewe I thought I would go a little way farther, on the chance of coming upon the ram I had missed; for he had disappeared in that direction. When I had crossed three or four ridges I sat down to look around. It was about half past nine, the heat was burning, and I knew the sheep would soon be going up the mountains to seek the shelter of the caves in which they spend the noonday hours. Suddenly I realized that there were some sheep on the side of the next ridge standing quietly watching me. There were four bunches, scattered among the rocks; three were of ewes and young, and there was one bunch of rams; in all there were sixteen sheep. I picked out the best ram, and, estimating the distance at two hundred and fifty yards, I fired, hitting, but too low. I failed to score in the running shooting, but when he was out of sight I hurried over and picked up the trail; he was bleeding freely, and it was not difficult to follow him. He went half a mile or so and then lay down in a rock cave; but he was up and off before I could labor into sight, and made a most surprising descent down the side of a steep ravine. When I caught sight of him again he was half-way up the opposite wall of the ravine though only about a hundred yards distant; he was standing behind a large rock with only his quarters visible, but one more shot brought matters to a finish. The heat was very great, so I started right to work to get the skin off. A great swarm of bees gathered to the feast. They were villainous-looking, and at first they gave me many qualms, but we got used to each other and I soon paid no attention to them, merely brushing them off any part that I wanted to skin. I was only once stung, and that was when a bee got inside my clothing and I inadvertently squeezed it. Before I had finished the skinning I heard a shot from Win; I replied, and a little while afterward he came along. I shall not soon forget packing the skin, with the head and the leg-bones still in it, down that mountainside. In addition to being very heavy, it made an unwieldy bundle, as I had no rope with which to tie it up. I held the head balanced on one shoulder, with a horn hooked round my neck; the legs I bunched together as best I could, but they were continually coming loose and causing endless trouble. After I reached the bottom, I left Win with the sheep and struck off for our night’s camping-place. It was after eleven and the very hottest part of the day. I had to be careful not to touch any of the metal part of my gun; indeed, the wooden stock was unpleasantly hot, and I was exceedingly glad that there was to be water waiting for me at camp.

I got Dominguez and the horses and brought in the sheep, which took several hours. That afternoon we were back at Tinah’alta, with a long evening’s work ahead of me skinning out the heads and feet by starlight. Utting, who was always ready to do anything at any time, and did everything well, turned to with a will and took the ewe off my hands.

The next day I was hard at work on the skins. One of the tanks, about four hundred yards from camp, was a great favorite with the sheep, and more than once during our stay the men in camp saw sheep come down to drink at it. This had generally happened when I was off hunting; but on the morning when I was busy with the skins two rams came down to drink. It was an hour before noon; for at this place the sheep finished feeding before they drank. The wind was blowing directly up the gulch to them, but although they stopped several times to stare at the camp, they eventually came to the water-hole and drank. Of course we didn’t disturb these sheep, for not only were they in the United States, but they were drinking at a water-hole in a desert country; and a man who has travelled the deserts, and is any sort of a sportsman, would not shoot game at a water-hole unless he were in straits for food.

I had been hunting on the extreme end of the Gila Range and near a range called El Viejo Hombre (The Old Man). After I shot my ram, in the confusion that followed, two of the young rams broke back, came down the mountain, passing quite close to Win, and crossed the plain to the Viejo Hombre Range, some mile and a half away. The bands of sheep out of which I shot my specimens had been feeding chiefly on the twigs of a small symmetrical bush, called by the Mexicans El Yervo del Baso, the same, I believe, that Professor Hornaday in his _Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava_ calls the white Brittle bush. They had also been eating such galleta-grass as they could find; it was on this grass that we depended for food for our horses and mules. Apparently the sheep of these bands had not been going to the water-hole; there were numerous places where they had been breaking down cactus and eating the pulp. In this country Win said that the rams and the ewes began to run together in October, and that in February the young were born. When the rams left the ewes, they took with them the yearling rams, and they didn’t join the ewes again until the next October.

On the following day I left Utting and Proebstel and took the trail to the Tule tank. The two Mexicans were with me and we had two horses and three mules. We were travelling very light, for we were bound for a country where water-holes were not only few and far between but most uncertain. My personal baggage consisted of my washing kit, an extra pair of shoes, a change of socks, and a couple of books. Besides our bedding we had some coffee, tea, sugar, rice, flour (with a little bacon to take the place of lard in making bread), and a good supply of frijoles, or Mexican beans. It was on these last that we really lived. As soon as we got to a camp we always put some frijoles in a kettle and started a little fire to boil them. If we were to be there for a couple of days we put in enough beans to last us the whole time, and then all that was necessary in getting a meal ready was to warm up the beans.

It was between four and five in the afternoon when we left Tinah’alta, and though the moon did not rise until late, the stars were bright and the trail was clear. The desert we were riding through was covered with mesquite and creosote and innumerable choya cactus; there were also two kinds of prickly-pear cactus, and ocatillas were plentiful. The last are curious plants; they are formed somewhat on the principle of an umbrella, with a very short central stem from which sometimes as many as twenty spokes radiate umbrella-wise. These spokes are generally about six feet long and are covered with thorns which are partially concealed by tiny leaves. The flower of the ocatilla is scarlet, and although most of them had stopped flowering by August, there were a few still in bloom. After about six hours’ silent riding we reached Tule. The word means a marsh, but, needless to say, all that we found was a rock-basin with a fair supply of water and a very generous supply of tadpoles and water-lice.

Next morning when we came to get breakfast ready we found we had lost, through a hole in a pack-sack, all of our eating utensils except a knife and two spoons; but we were thankful at having got off so easily. By three in the afternoon we were ready for what was to be our hardest march. We wished to get into the Pinacate country; and our next water was to be the Papago tank, which Casares said was about forty-five miles south of us. He said that in this tank we were always sure to find water.

For the first fifteen miles our route lay over the Camino del Diablo, a trail running through the Tule desert--and it has proved indeed a “road of the devil” for many an unfortunate. Then we left the trail, the sun sank, twilight passed, and in spite of the brilliancy of the stars, the going became difficult. In many places where the ground was free from boulders the kangaroo-rats had made a network of tunnels, and into these our animals fell, often sinking shoulder-deep. Casares was leading, riding a hardy little white mule. While he rode he rolled cigarette after cigarette, and as he bent forward in his saddle to light them, for a moment his face would be brought into relief by the burning match and a trail of sparks would light up the succeeding darkness. Once his mule shied violently, and we heard the angry rattling of a side-winder, a sound which once heard is never forgotten.

At about eight o’clock, what with rocks and kangaroo-rat burrows, the going became so bad that we decided to offsaddle and wait till the moon should rise. We stretched out with our heads on our saddles and dozed until about midnight, when it was time to start on again. Soon the desert changed and we were free of the hills among which we had been travelling, and were riding over endless rolling dunes of white sand. As dawn broke, the twin peaks of Pinacate appeared ahead of us, and the sand gave place to a waste of red and black lava, broken by steep arroyos. We had been hearing coyotes during the night, and now a couple jumped up from some rocks, a hundred yards away, and made off amongst the lava.

By eight o’clock the sun was fiercely hot, but we were in among the foot-hills of Pinacate. I asked Casares where the tanks were, and he seemed rather vague, but said they were beyond the next hills. They were not; but several times more he felt sure they were “just around the next hill.” I realized that we were lost and resolved to give him one more try, and then if I found that he was totally at sea as to the whereabouts of the tank, I intended to find some shelter for the heat of the day, and, when it got cooler, to throw the packs off our animals and strike back to Tule. It is difficult to realize how quickly that fierce sun dries up man and beast. I doubt if in that country a really good walker could have covered ten miles in the noonday heat without water and without stopping. We could have made Tule all right, but the return trip would have been a very unpleasant one, and we would probably have lost some of our animals.

However, just before we reached Casares’s last location of the Papago tanks, we came upon an unknown water-hole, in the bed of an arroyo. The rains there are very local, and although the rest of the country was as dry as tinder, some fairly recent downpour had filled up this little rocky basin. There were two trees near it, a mesquite and a palo verde, and though neither would fit exactly into the category of shade-trees, we were most grateful to them for being there at all. The palo verde is very deceptive. When seen from a distance, its greenness gives it a false air of being a lovely, restful screen from the sun, but when one tries to avail oneself of its shade, the fallacy is soon evident. It is only when there is some parasitical mistletoe growing on it that the palo verde offers any real shade. The horses were very thirsty, and it was a revelation to see how they lowered the water in the pool.

Dominguez was only about thirty years old, but he seemed jaded and tired, whereas Casares, who was white-haired, and must have been at least sixty, was as fresh as ever. Two days later, when I was off hunting on the mountains, Casares succeeded in finding the Papago tanks; they were about fifteen miles to our northwest, and were as dry as a bone! I later learned that a Mexican had come through this country some three weeks before we were in there. He had a number of pack-animals. When he found the Papago dry, he struck on for the next water, and succeeded in making it only after abandoning his packs and losing most of his horses.

We sat under our two trees during the heat of the day; but shortly after four I took my rifle and my canteen and went off to look for sheep, leaving the two Mexicans in camp. Although I saw no rams, I found plenty of sign and got a good idea of the lay of the land.

The next four or five days I spent hunting from this camp. I was very anxious to get some antelope, and I spent three or four days in a fruitless search for them. It was, I believe, unusually dry, even for that country, and the antelope had migrated to better feeding-grounds. Aside from a herd of nine, which I saw from a long way off but failed to come up with, not only did I not see any antelope, but I did not even find any fresh tracks. There were many very old tracks, and I have no doubt that, at certain times of the year, there are great numbers of antelope in the country over which I was hunting.

The long rides, however, were full of interest. I took the Mexicans on alternate days, and we always left camp before daylight. As the hours wore on, the sun would grow hotter and hotter. In the middle of the day there was generally a breeze blowing across the lava-beds, and that breeze was like the blast from a furnace. There are few whom the desert, at sunset and sunrise, fails to fascinate; but only those who have the love of the wastes born in them feel the magic of their appeal under the scorching noonday sun. Reptile life was abundant; lizards scuttled away in every direction; there were some rather large ones that held their tails up at an oblique angle above the ground as they ran, which gave them a ludicrous appearance. A species of toad whose back was speckled with red was rather common. Jack-rabbits and cottontails were fairly numerous, and among the birds Gambel’s quail and the whitewings, or sonora pigeons, were most in evidence. I came upon one of these later on her nest in a palo-verde-tree; the eggs were about the size of a robin’s and were white, and the nest was made chiefly of galleta-grass. The whitewings are very fond of the fruit of the saguaro; this fruit is of a reddish-orange color when ripe, and the birds peck a hole in it and eat the scarlet pulp within. It is delicious, and the Indians collect it and dry it; the season was over when I was in the country, but there was some late fruit on a few of the trees. When I was back in camp at sunset it was pleasant to hear the pigeons trilling as they flew down to the pool to drink.