TO AGUA CALIENTE 249 



are now close upon the final destination, came this 

 way, with scars of Apache arrows and notches on 

 rifle-butts that meant stories that would make 

 "movie" men bite their fingers for envy. Here 

 passed bands of jingling caballeros in the ante- 

 Gringo days of the forties, and here came Kearny's 

 dragoons and Cooke's nondescript "Mormon Bat- 

 talion," and many of those Great Plainsmen to 

 whom every trail from the Mississippi to the Coast 

 was like one's private short cut 'cross lots. Much of 

 the great California gold rush came this way, and a 

 later generation of gold-seekers found this the handi- 

 est route for quests into the Superstitions or C6co- 

 pas, Chocolates or Huachucas. Engineers, from 

 Lieutenant Emory's 1846 Military Reconnaissance 

 of the Thirty-second Parallel down to the party 

 whom I met near here a few years ago looking out 

 aeroplane landings, have found Vallecitos Springs 

 invaluable as a base of operations. And it may be 

 reckoned that many a fugitive from justice has 

 found this the easiest way to cheat the sheriff by the 

 time-honored method of "skipping across the line," 

 since the Mexican border is but a few miles away. 



All the morning I had seen hardly a token of ani- 

 mal life: a road-runner perhaps, but no other bird, 

 nor beast, nor even reptile. Here I found flycatchers 

 and a woodpecker or two gathered in a cottonwood 

 near the water-trough that the county authorities 

 have placed here for the benefit of cattle and cattle- 

 men. Dragon-flies were patrolling over the cienaga, 

 and hornets were busy at their masonic labors on 

 a branch overhead. It was altogether a seductive 



