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antelopes, and returned about dark, after a day of twenty-five 

 miles of the roughest kind of walking, just as the horses arrived 

 from the Tres Pozos with twenty gallons of the vile water, 

 carried in canvas sacks. We drank tea until our stomachs 

 bulged, yet the thirst in our throats remained unappeased. 



On the following day we were fortunate in seeing no fewer 

 than nine antelopes, but all of them at very long range. 

 Pancho alone obtained a shot, which served only to make 

 the game still more wary. 



On the breathless morning of April 4, we tramped close to 

 twenty miles, partly over exceedingly rough and stony soil. 

 The whole period of seven or eight hours was a gruelling drill, 

 especially as we saw not one pronghorn to encourage us, 

 though for a while we followed the fresh trail of a doe with 

 two fawns, losing the tracks on hard ground, after the trio 

 had evidently started to run. I startled innumerable jack- 

 rabbits, which bounded away, now and again sitting on their 

 haunches to look back at me. When they ran between me 

 and the early sun, a blood-red light glowed through their 

 upright ears. I also flushed a number of the silent night- 

 hawks from their naps beneath mesquite shrubs. Among the 

 creosotes were many large burrows, which, the Captain said, 

 were the diggings of badgers. From time to time we care- 

 lessly stumbled into the little homesteads of kangaroo-rats 

 (Dipodomys sp.). These tawny, parched, thirst-loving rodents 

 dig good-sized tunnels in low mounds of sandy soil, under- 

 mining the surface so that the tired and unwary pedestrian 

 sinks through to the middle of his shins, a disconcerting 

 accident for him, and doubtless also for the rats. Horses 

 schooled in the ways of the desert learn well to avoid such 

 pitfalls. 



During the morning, Mr. Rockwell had a narrow escape 

 when he stepped on a horned rattlesnake, or sidewinder 

 (Crotalus cerastes), one of two that lay apparently asleep in 

 his path. Probably his foot came down on the snake's head, 

 and at the buzz of the rattle he leaped to safety. We killed 

 the snake and its mate. The latter made short strikes — 

 about a third the length of its body — with lightning rapidity. 



