18 SADDLE AND CAMP 



of barley, filled with dirt and grit, the only 

 food they possessed, which they ground in mor- 

 tars for bread, or sometimes cooked whole. 



"But times have changed," said he, "since the 

 railroad came. The young folks don't appre- 

 ciate it. They think they've got it hard. We 

 used to have to drive the two hundred and 

 twenty-five miles to Albuquerque to get anything 

 we couldn't raise or make ourselves, and then 

 weren't sure of getting it, and we never had a 

 newspaper. Now we've got the railroad right 

 at our door, down to Holbrook, and we can get 

 most anything there. All we got to do is 

 hitch up and drive over. And they print a 

 paper there once a week that gives us the news." 



Holbrook is fifty miles away! But in this 

 country fifty miles is not far, and a settler so 

 near a railroad considers himself fortunate. 



"Deer were always plentiful here until with- 

 in two or three years ago," said Mr. Shumway. 

 "Until then we frequently saw them from the 

 cabin door, and we could get a piece of meat 

 almost any time. But recently, for some reason, 

 they rarely come down, and it's necessary to go 

 to the mountains to hunt them." 



A dozen miles beyond Shumway we rode 

 through Show Low, a collection of miserable 

 log and adobe cabins, very parched and pov- 



