indigestion, but which later proved the forerunner of a 

 sharp and sudden illness, similar to ptomaine poisoning. 

 The others, unaware, passed on and out of sight, and I 

 remained alone — becoming presently quite desperately 

 ill. Later, recovering and following their trail, I came to 

 the cattle-trodden bottom of a dried-up pool in which, 

 unknown to me, the trail divided, and I turned — wrongly 

 for the point I aimed at — down between two mountain 

 masses toward the setting sun. 



Daylight passed into starlit evening, and evening into 

 moonlit night while still my horse and I wound down 

 into the valley, spreading out — dim and mysterious — 

 beyond. In it, far away, lights as of human habitation 

 seemed to glimmer, then vanished to reappear again 

 elsewhere — illusions of the night; and occasionally I 

 heard the cry of some wild animal, a cougar once or 

 twice, and hunting coyotes with their wild pack-laughter. 

 Huge rock shapes loomed spectrally against the sky to 

 right or left as I descended; clusters of silver sage 

 shone white in the moonlight here and there beside the 

 trail, like marble ruins; and where the wet season or 

 occasional cloudburst streams, whose waters gather with 

 incredible speed, had made their way, darkly shadowed 

 cuts were flung across the trail or followed down beside 

 it. Late in the evening, reaching one of these, the trail 

 divided, one branch crossing it and the other passing 

 down its side. I took the one that crossed and later found 

 that had it been the other, the desert only would have 

 lain before me. 



Midnight came and neither my horse nor I had had food 

 or water for a dozen hours; he grew exhausted, and I 

 had finally to dismount and lead him. At length I came 

 to the river, but sunk in a rocky bed too deep to reach. 

 Gradually, as I followed it along, it rose to the trail level; 

 and the trail soon after seemed to enter it. Crossing, 

 upon the chance it was a ford, I found myself suddenly, 



7 



