30 SADDLE AND CAMP 



less Mexican shepherds. Although these latter 

 appeared to be lounging away an existence with- 

 out occupation, they nevertheless had the sheep 

 under their watchful eyes, keeping them within 

 bounds and guarding them against coyotes, 

 which we frequently saw in the distance, skulk- 

 ing for prey, or jaguars, inhabiting mountain 

 ravines and canons, which one never sees but 

 which silently steal out in the night to destroy 

 cattle and sheep. Once we saw some cowboys 

 in the distance with pack horses laden with camp 

 supplies, trailing in from St. Johns. 



A noon halt was made one day by a spring 

 that bubbled, cool and refreshing, near the top 

 of a gentle slope and sent a rivulet flowing down 

 through a wooded glen into a valley below. A 

 hundred yards above the spring, at the edge of 

 the timber, a wide, grassy plain stretched far 

 away, to the eastward. A few hundred yards 

 south of the spring, on a bit of rising ground, 

 was a large corral, now disused and falling into 

 decay The corral once belonged to a great 

 cattle ranch, and the grassy plain was part of 

 the range. 



Here, at the edge of the timber, above the 

 spring, one of the nerviest gun fights in the 

 history of Arizona took place some five or six 

 years ago. For several years two well-known 



