Aug. i 9, igii.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
293 
B. watered the horses and took the mare to a 
neighboring field for the night. It was amusing 
to see the fuss the black stallion kicked up when 
his companion was taken away. He neighed and 
whinnied and snorted and kicked until I looked 
to see the barn fall apart. Part of this barn 
is divided off by some poles and he tried to get 
under them by resorting to the man-taught trick 
of getting on his knees. A half horse would 
not have thought of making use of the accom¬ 
plishment. It took a whole horse to think of 
it, just as in human affairs the hard places are 
gotten over, through or under by the whole men. 
The weazened, sissy men wait till the others 
make the breach. 
“When I was a boy,” B. began, “the cooking 
was always done out in the yard in summer 
with two uprights and a cross pole to hang pots 
on just like that out there, and one night after 
supper my uncle, Dick Berryman, who was not 
much older than I, said: ‘Let’s chase the ducks 
through the embers and see what they do.’ So 
we got them running and chased them through 
the embers, and next morning his mother wanted 
to know what was the matter with the ducks, 
and Dick said, ‘They just got to running around 
and ran through the embers.’ It didn’t hurt any¬ 
thing but their webs; made them have feet just 
like chickens.” 
I find that I forgot to bring any kitchen soap. 
I wonder if it is considered good form to wash 
dishes with toilet soap. (Personally I prefer 
sand to any kind of soap, but there is no sand 
here.) I do not question the possibilities of the 
matter, for, while the dictum of the region would 
doubtless be, “Some says you cain, and some 
says you cain’t,” I know very well that you 
“cain.” A quail whistles up in the woods; I 
LOOKING DOWN THE LAKE FROM CAMP. 
whistle back. Last night a wild turkey that had 
been chased off its roost by something lit be¬ 
side the cabin, the dogs barked and it cluttered 
off and up again. I called that quail with¬ 
in twenty feet of me, where he peered around 
an old wood stove abandoned by the lonesome 
lady. I gave him the whisper call, just above 
my breath, and he whispered back. Then, for 
experiment, I whistled a full sized whistle again, 
the same kind of imitation I called him down 
the hill with, and he clapped his claws over his 
ears and said to himself: “My God! What’s 
that?” and scurried back up the mountain. Last 
night in the story telling, the camp-fire having 
called back the memory of his uncle Dick Berry¬ 
man who had to do with it, B. told me 
THE STORY OF THE DESERT. 
Some time after the beginning of the war, 
and while my regiment was away down in Louis¬ 
iana, a mule kicked me and ruptured me, and a 
few weeks afterward the surgeon learned of it 
and examined me, and as there were no trusses 
in the Confederate medical supplies, he made out 
a certificate for my discharge and I came home 
and got a truss and was practically cured by the 
time of Price’s raid, when they took me again, 
this time in Captain Dick Berryman’s company. 
He had me to take care of his wife at Pocahon¬ 
tas, and we were there when the war ended. 
Uncle Dick wrote us a letter for me to stay 
there with his wife, my mother’s sister, until he 
sent for us to join him out West, and after a 
time the letter came for us to get ready and 
come to him at a place called Peranigat Valley, 
about 300 miles south of Salt Lake. We made 
the trip in a covered wagon and with a four- 
mule team. He met us at Salt Lake, and when 
we got to the valley, he moved into a sod cabin 
on his land. Soon after that there was a man 
named Hayward from Boston who was com¬ 
ing with the machinery for a smelter across the 
desert from Los Angeles, and one night at a 
dry camp the mules got away, and when they 
found them they were out of water and had to 
throw off the machinery and come in without 
it, and glad to get in at that, and now he was 
looking for other teamsters to make the trip 
back for the machinery, and I took my mules 
and went along. 
I was the last wagon, and one day out be¬ 
tween Las Vegas and the next spring, which 
were about forty miles apart, I thought I saw 
something move under a sage bush off from the 
road, and I got off and went out there and found 
a man lying there. Plis tongue was swollen so 
that it stuck out of his mouth and he was un¬ 
conscious. I ran after the other wagons and 
we came back and forced a little water down 
his throat, and after a while he began to revive 
and make motions for us to give him more 
water. The others said not to give him any 
more or it would kill him, so I said, “Let’s put 
him in my wagon beside the water barrel and 
give him an oat straw to stick in the bung hole, 
and he can lie there and suck at that and he 
won't be able to get enough to hurt him,” so 
we did so, and when we reached camp he was 
all right. He, too, had made a dry camp, intend¬ 
ing to make an early start and make the spring 
the next day. His mules disappeared in the 
night, and in his haste to overtake them he 
started after them without food or water, and 
hunted for them all that day, lost his bearings, 
became exhausted and laid down where I had 
found him and went to sleep, and that was all 
he knew until we found him, and he came to 
find himself sucking water out of a barrel by 
means of a straw. 
We made the trip all right and I got $50 for 
my share. Shortly after that Uncle Dick said 
a man had been coming across the desert some 
time before who got in the same fix as the man 
we had rescued. His horses had gotten loose 
at night. He had a long hunt for them, and 
when he overtook them it was too late to go 
back, and too far to go without water, so he 
came on to the next spring, and thence on to 
the settlement. He said that any one who would 
go back after the wagon could have it, and it 
IRA DARRIN, SABADIS AND JOE PICTOU. 
was a good wagon, worth in that country $300. 
I said I would go after it if I could get any¬ 
body to go with me, and he found a man who 
was willing to make the trip. We made the 
first spring all right, and just before dark an 
Indian appeared on a little rise out on the desert 
and looked down at us. I called to him and 
asked if he was a friendly Indian, and he said 
he was, so I told him to come down, which after 
a time he did, and we gave him his supper. 
After a while I told him about the wagon that 
had been abandoned some weeks before, and 
asked him if he knew about it. He said he did, 
and I asked him if he knew where it was, and 
he said, “Yes.” So I asked if he would guide 
us to it, and he said, “How much?” I showed 
him a red shirt I had with me and told him I 
would give it to him if he took us to the wagon. 
He readily agreed, and the next morning we 
were off bright and early, the Indian in the lead. 
There were a good many jack rabbits near the 
spring at which he shot with his bow and arrows. 
Pie got one every now and then, too. lie would 
come! to the wagon and say to me, “Shoot! 
Shoot!” indicating my revolver, but I declined. 
He also displayed a desire to ride behind us, 
which I also declined to permit, so he rode on 
in front hour after hour, with a brief stop for 
dinner, and toward night we came to the wagon. 
He had indicated before starting from the 
spring that the wheels had dried up from stand 
ing in the desert so long, and that there war 
about a quarter of an inch space between the 
tire and the felloes of the wheels, so I had 
taken a piece of wood with which to make 
wedges to wedge the tires fast on the felloes. 
In this way we got the wagon back to the 
