186 East and West 
could only make them shabby little crosses of the 
sombre manzanita [probably creosote bush]. Still, 
the living felt the dead were cared for and the dying 
knew it would be so. But oh, the sadness of a 
soldier’s funeral in that dreary desert as they sounded 
the three taps over the grave, and it seemed to say 
they were called home for the last time, so far away 
from their native land. 
They gave those three taps softly, so softly, as a 
farewell and left him there under the broad blue sky. 
Such was travelling in Arizona in the sum- 
mer of 1869 and such the life of an army 
woman in those days. Old Camp MacDowell 
has long been abandoned and the Apache— 
the human scorpion of the desert—has lost 
his sting. Now the deserts are called valleys 
and not far from old MacDowell—once so far 
from everywhere—is the site of Roosevelt 
Dam which is to make the orange and the 
alfalfa thrive where grew only the cholla and 
the creosote bush. The men who made this 
possible—the true pioneers of this region— 
were the old cavalry troops who scouted the 
mountains from Whipple down to the bor- 
der and across the desert from Yuma to the 
Mogollons. 
We are free to dream and botanise, or play 
at roughing it with our aluminum coffee-pot 
and fry-pan as we cook our bacon on the 
