WITH THE BLUECOATS OX THE BORDER. 175 



teamster, lazily raising his huge frame on one elbow, gazes up 

 the river for a moment, and then, sliding down from his ob- 

 servatory on the pile of skins, lounges heavily off up the road. 



The mosquitoes are out in swarms now and are trouble- 

 some enough, in spite of the sage-brush fires that have been 

 kindled here and there on the bank, and into which, some dis- 

 tance below us, the " bucks " are amusing themselves by firing 

 a shot now and then, scattering the sparks in all directions, and 

 laughing and yelling in savage glee at their rather dangerous 

 pastime. Deeper and deeper grow the shades of evening. The 

 moon rises red and angry, and casts long, quivering reflections 

 down into the water. " She cometh not, he said," parodies a 

 musical voice from the wagon ; " you will have to put up with 

 our rude frontier accommodations for another nis^ht, I fancv." 

 It looks, indeed, as if it were useless to tarry any longer to- 

 night ; so, nothing loath as far as enjoying " the rude frontier 

 accommodations " for another night is concerned, we drive 

 back to the post in the darkness. It is late on the following 

 afternoon before the boat finally gets over the bar and steams 

 up to the landing, and we once more bid farewell to our good 

 friends, this time really to leave them. 



Down the river once more ; sometimes aground for hours 

 on mud -banks and sand-bars, literally wading over them inch 

 by inch with the help of our huge spars; sometimes running 

 free and swift with the deep, fast - flowing current ; down the 

 river past more Indian villages and trading -posts, past green 

 hills, white -streaked where the gypsum crops through, remind- 

 ing one of the English downs, across the reservation-lines, past 

 a " ranch " or two — outlying pioneer posts of westward - march- 

 ing civilization — down the river into boundless tracts of oats 

 and grain and great waving fields of corn, past large, prosper- 

 ous -lookinG: farms and fjreat ranches, on under the iron railwav 



