82 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 



For the first few miles of our trip we had good 

 going. The route lay along an excellent road cut in 

 the side of the mountain by an old mining concern 

 whose property has for years now been idle. We 

 were congratulating ourselves on this good luck 

 when the highway stopped abruptly at El Centro, a 

 group of empty shacks marking the site of the former 

 mining camp, and an almost invisible trail led us 

 from there through two miles of thick oak brush and 

 locust. 



Our untutored pack animals immediately scattered 

 in all directions like a covey of quail. As soon as 

 one of them felt that he was out of sight he would 

 stop and stand silent and motionless until some one 

 of us found him and drove him back into line. 



It meant a strenuous afternoon of rushing hither 

 and thither in the tough, scarcely penetrable cover, 

 looking for laggards, bringing up the recalcitrant, 

 counting the outfit over every few minutes and, if 

 they could not all be accounted for, starting out to 

 search once more. 



But, like all things, our task came finally to an 

 end and we made our first Gallinas camp at sun- 

 down, with tired bodies and frayed feelings but with 

 none missing from the roll of jackasses. 



We remained at this camp several days, making 

 long runs to the west and shorter ones eastward to 

 abut on our work of the preceding weeks. 



Our next move but one took us to the head of Gal- 

 linas Creek, near the summit of Hillsboro Peak. 



