354 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



mental coyote, maudlin with moonlight, vented his 

 blighted affections in hysterical yawpings, and once 

 half-a-dozen wild cattle rose suddenly out of the 

 brush and gathered in a knot as if to stampede us. 

 The sight of a man on foot is so strange to these 

 roamers of the ranges that they are apt to be danger- 

 ous to such a person. The cowboy who looks them 

 up twice or thrice a year must be thought a kind of 

 centaur, while a pedestrian must seem a fragment 

 or monstrosity. 



Slowly we neared the western opening, and new 

 shapes appeared on the skyline. I tried to recall 

 their outlines; were those the Eagles? those the 

 Pintos? those the Cottonwoods? Could I have been 

 mistaken in my impression of the lay of the land, 

 and would the road after all turn north and lead us 

 into some new pickle? ^ 



One o'clock; two o'clock. By my reckoning we 

 should be nearing the cross-road. The moon was 

 nearly down. Poor Kaweah plodded along, "faint 

 yet pursuing," his spirit as flat as his ears. Three 

 o'clock, and no hopeful sign. Then at last some- 

 thing showed ahead beside the road. Could it be a 

 sign-post? It could, and it was, one of those enduring 

 metal posts that the good county of Riverside has 

 placed at some of these main cross-roads, and that 

 every county whose territory runs into the desert 

 should be compelled to provide on all routes of 



1 I learned afterwards that during the night I had passed, without 

 knowing it, close to one place where I could have got water. This is a 

 spot humorously known as the Hayfields, where a thin growth of 

 grass is used by cattle-men for pasturage, and water has been piped 

 to a trough. 



