82. THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
For the first few miles of our trip we had good 
going. The route lay along an excellent road cut in 
the side of the mountain by an old mining concern 
whose property has for years now been idle. We 
were congratulating ourselves on this. good luck 
when the highway stopped abruptly at El Centro, a 
group of empty shacks marking the site of the former 
mining camp, and an almost invisible trail led us 
from there through two miles of thick oak brush and 
locust. 
Our untutored pack animals immediately scattered 
in all directions like a covey of quail. As soon as 
one of them felt that he was out of sight he would 
stop and stand silent and motionless until some one 
of us found him and drove him back into line. > 
It meant a strenuous afternoon of rushing hither 
and thither in the tough, scarcely penetrable cover, 
looking for laggards, bringing up the recalcitrant, 
counting the outfit over every few minutes and, if 
they could not all be accounted for, starting out to 
search once more. 
But, like all things, our task came finally to an 
end and we made our first Gallinas camp at sun- 
down, with tired bodies and frayed feelings but with 
none missing from the roll of jackasses. 
We remained at this camp several days, making 
long runs to the west and shorter ones eastward to 
abut on our work of the preceding weeks. 
Our next move but one took us to the head of Gal- 
linas Creek, near the summit of Hillsboro Peak. 
