ACROSS THE DESERT 99 



At Black Falls we lunched beneath the un- 

 certain shade of a cottonwood tree close to the 

 river, while the horses grazed upon scant tufts 

 of desert grass nurtured by the river moisture. 

 This was a favorite camping ground of the 

 Mormon emigrants from Utah who took so 

 large a part in the settlement of Arizona, and 

 while we rested and smoked through the burn- 

 ing heat of midday, John told me of one of his 

 own experiences some twenty years before at 

 this very point. He was a young fellow then, 

 seventeen or eighteen years of age, and was 

 going home to Arizona from southern Utah, 

 where he had been engaged in carrying mail 

 on horseback between outlying wilderness 

 settlements. His outfit consisted of three horses. 



At Kanab, Utah, he had fallen in with a 

 young man and his wife, emigrating to Arizona 

 in a covered prairie schooner, and thence to 

 Black Falls he kept their company. Here 

 they camped over night near the spot where we 

 were resting. All the horses were hobbled and 

 turned loose in the usual manner, the man and 

 wife retired for the night to their wagon, and 

 John rolled in his blankets under the sky and 

 was soon close wrapped in the sound and 

 dreamless sleep of youth. 



At dawn he awakened, conscious that some- 



