67 



While watching us, it kept thrusting its forked tongue alter- 

 nately up over its snout and down beneath its chin. This 

 was only the first of several experiences with these incon- 

 spicuous, backward-gliding reptiles, which were unpleasantly 

 common in the Creosote and Saltbush Associations, especially 

 at the hour of dusk. One evening Mac, the cook, killed a 

 sidewinder in Captain Funcke's bedding just as I rolled up 

 in my own blankets too fagged even to investigate closely for 

 a similar bedfellow. On another occasion I rode my horse 

 into the sand dune region, in the southeastern part of Pattie 

 Basin, to hunt alone. A sidewinder at the base of a buried- 

 mesquite mound was my first customer, and, oddly enough, 

 the horse showed no fear of the reptile rattling ominously 

 under his nose. When I dismounted, the snake struck at me 

 repeatedh^ while retreating tail foremost, but I killed it with 

 a small stick and deposited it in my saddle-bag. The speci- 

 men, before me as I write, is 22 inches long, or of about the 

 maximum size for the species. It has nine rattles and a 

 button, and in its right upper jaw are two full-sized,.functional 

 fangs. The left fang is single. 



The first antelope, a fawn, was brought into camp at noon 

 of April 4. Pancho, coming from the water-hole with our 

 eleven animals, had killed it with his roundabout rifle while 

 the poor creature lay sleeping, or feigning sleep, among the 

 creosote bushes. The fawn, however, was no more welcome 

 than the bulging water bags, for, until the Mexican arrived, 

 we had had just two cupfuls of the yellow fluid in our posses- 

 sion, and we were seriously considering a seven-mile hike to- 

 the Tres Pozos on our weary feet. 



Late in the forenoon on this day, dense white clouds gathered 

 over the Peninsula Escarpment, obscuring some of the peaks. 

 The Captain said that they were mists from the Pacific; he 

 prophesied strong westerly winds, which subsequently arose. 



On April 6, we moved our field headquarters from the first 

 site to a miserable clump of mesquite on low ground a mile or 

 so northwest of the Tres Pozos. The new neighborhood was 

 far less attractive than the higher land — hotter by day, 

 colder by night — but guayeta grass for the horses was rela- 



