CHAPTER XY. 



A FIRE SCENE — A GLIMPSE OF THE SOUTH — 'COON HUNTING IN MISSISSIPPI — VOICES 



IN THE SOLITUDE — FRIENDS OR FOES A STARTLING SERENADE — PANIC IN 



CAMP CAYOTES AND THEIR HABITS WORRYING A BUFFALO BULL THE 



SECOND DAY DAUB, OUR ARTIST — HE MAKES HIS MARK. 



OUR fire scene was evidently no novelty to the 

 Mexicans, whose lives had been spent in camp- 

 ing out, and who, with one cheap blanket each, for 

 mattress and covering, slept soundly under the 

 wagons. Across their dark, expressionless faces the 

 flames threw fitful gleams of light, which were as un- 

 heeded as the flashes with which the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury endeavors to penetrate the gloom which shrouds 

 them as a nation. While the world moves on, the 

 degenerate descendants of Montezuma sleep. 



In the valley bordering our little skirt of trees we 

 could hear the horses cropping the short, juicy buf- 

 f[ilo grass, and trailing their lariat ropes around a 

 circle, of which the pin was the center. Semi-Colon 

 la}'" on the grass close to his father, who occupied a 

 cracker-box seat in this tableau, the amiable son at 

 little intervals raising his head to indorse, in his pe- 

 culiar dissyllabic way, what the positive parent said. 

 Looking at the group around me, and thinking of our 

 evening turkey hunt, memory carried me back to the 



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