2 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



yon, and had then crossed the canyon to meet 

 us. The youngest one of the three had not be- 

 fore been on such a trip as that we intended to 

 take; but the two elder boys, for their good 

 fortune, had formerly been at the Evans School 

 in Mesa, Arizona, and among the by-products 

 of their education was a practical and working 

 familiarity with ranch life, with the round-up, 

 and with traveUing through the desert and on 

 the mountains. Jesse Cummings, of Mesa, was 

 along to act as cook, packer, and horse-wrangler, 

 helped in all three branches by the two elder 

 boys; he was a Kentuckian by birth, and a 

 better man for our trip and a stancher friend 

 could not have been found. 



On the 15th we went down to the bottom of 

 the canyon. There we were to have been met 

 by our outfit with two men whom we had en- 

 gaged; but they never turned up, and we 

 should have been in a bad way had not Mr. 

 Stevenson, of the Bar Z Cattle Company, come 

 down the trail behind us, while the foreman of 

 the Bar Z, Mr. Mansfield, appeared to meet 

 him, on the opposite side of the rushing, muddy 

 torrent of the Colorado. Mansfield worked us 

 across on the trolley which spans the river; and 

 then we joined in and worked Stevenson, and 

 some friends he had with him, across. Among 



