294 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. 19, 1911. 
spring, where I soaked the wheels well over 
night, after which they were all right. The In¬ 
dian put the shirt on and went off, probably to 
his tribe, to show off. 
We left that spring early in the morning and 
made a night camp half way to the next spring. 
Something made me wake up in the night, and 
getting up I found that the mules had gotten 
loose and were gone. I waked up my partner 
and told him to get up and get breakfast while 
I hunted up my mules. I started off without 
food or water and tracked those mules all day 
and late in the evening, when I found them 
standing around the next spring tired and thirsty. 
It was a canon spring, a mile or so up off the 
trail in a hole eight or ten feet below the sur¬ 
face of the ground. I had nothing to water 
them with but my hat, so I climbed up and down 
that wall until I had given them forty-six hat¬ 
fuls of water, after which I filled up on water, 
rode one mule and drove the others back to the 
wagon, where I found my partner asleep. He 
had not even got his own breakfast. I hustled 
him out, got supper, hitched up and barely man¬ 
aged to make the mules last until we got back 
to the spring. 
Shortly after that I went out to my uncle’s 
claim to see how they were getting along, and 
met him some distance away from the sod house 
carrying his axe. He was going over to a sort 
of chalk bluff near there to see if he could get 
some of it with which to build a house, as he 
had heard that you could cut it out in blocks 
with an axe, and that it soon became hard like 
stone. I said: “I will go with you.” “No,” he 
said, “you are tired; go on to the house and I 
will be back before long.” He came back that 
evening, cleaned his revolver that he had car¬ 
ried all through the war, oiled it, loaded it and 
shot himself through the heart. I never pitied 
a woman as I did my aunt. She was left with¬ 
out a cent in a wild mining country a thousand 
miles from home in a delicate condition, and 
where there were no other women. 
We had brought provisions enough across the 
plains to last us for a year, so we were not 
going to starve, and I had the $50, and the 
wagon rescued from the desert brought over 
a hundred dollars. After the baby came and 
she got well she proposed that we go up to 
the mines where she could keep a boarding 
house, which she did for two years, while I 
teamed with my mules and wagon and we went 
halves on everything. Then she married again 
and I came home. 
I got pretty well acquainted with two fellows 
out there, one of whom was called “Arkansas,” 
because he came from there, and the other “Mis- 
sissippi,” because he came from Mississippi. 
They never did have any other names that I. 
know of. “Mississippi” and I made a good 
many teaming trips together, some of them being 
across the desert to Los Angeles for supplies. 
There was an old miner who used to buy sup¬ 
plies from me when I came in from a trip with 
whom I was on good terms, and one time I 
wanted to make a trip and buy and speculate 
on my own supplies, and I didn’t have quite 
money enough, so I made up my mind I would 
ask him for some. I went up to his cabin and 
told him how I was fixed and what I wanted. 
He asked me how much I wanted and I said 
$700. He went to a box and counted out the 
money and handed it to me. 
“Hold on,” I said, “you don’t want to give it 
to me now. We ought to go down to the valley 
and I will make you out a note.” 
“What’s the use?” And he handed me over 
the money. “If your word isn’t good your note 
isn’t,” and that was all there was to it. 
One night when Mississippi and I were on 
the way back from Los Angeles on that trip 
two soldiers rode up to our camp and asked if 
they could stay with us over night. They were 
in uniform on army horses with army saddles 
and bridles. We said they could, whereupon one 
of them said, “But we have no grub.” We said 
we guessed we had enough for all of us. That 
night they asked if they could come on in with 
us, and as they seemed pretty decent people we 
said they could, and they came in. The last 
camp they wanted to sell us their horses. I said, 
“No, I’d rather not buy them.” It was pretty 
plain by that time they were deserters and the 
horses were Government property. “Well,” one 
of them said, "we are going to leave them with 
you, anyway.” And when we got in they left 
their horses and went off, and we never saw 
nor heard of them again. 
Another time the camp was out of flour and 
I made a trip with Mississippi about 150 miles 
away to buy a load and sell it. When we got 
there I didn’t have money enough to buy a full 
load, and a man offered to trade wagons with 
me and give me $100 to boot. It looked like a 
strong wagon, though it was older than mine, 
so I traded and bought a full load, and the next 
day we started, and about dark the off hind 
wheel crumpled all to pieces. It was not very 
far from the scene of the Mountain Meadow 
massacre, and but a few years later, and every¬ 
body in that country had been more or less 
affected by its unspeakable horror. It was then 
a debated question whether it was perpetrated 
by Indians or Mormons, although I had horses 
pointed out to me as being those that came 
from it. But whether it was Indians or Mor¬ 
mons, it was the first thing either of us thought 
of. I looked at Mississippi and said : “Missis¬ 
sippi, there is only one thing to do; either you 
stay here and watch the flour and I will go back 
and get a wheel, or I will stay here and watch 
the flour, and you go back and get a wheel.” 
And I looked at him pretty fierce and said: 
“Take your choice.” And he looked at me 
pretty fierce for a minute and said: “I’ll be 
damned if I will.” But while we were unload¬ 
ing, a couple of empty Mormon teams came 
along and hauled the flour back for us, and we 
all went back. I got the wheel fixed and we 
made the trip all right and made a lot of money 
out of it. But neither one of us was going to 
stay by himself at that place. 
This being the last day I arose from my slum¬ 
bers and proceeded to get breakfast. We had 
German pancakes, the making and cooking of 
which I have reason to believe I am proficient 
in. It is the kind you pay twenty-five cents each 
for at Heinekabooblers, except that instead of 
being the size of a meat plate they were neces¬ 
sarily restricted to the dimensions of the frying- 
pan, ten inches in diameter. It at once developed 
that it took one man to cook while the other 
ate, so we took turns, one at the frying-pan and 
the other busy with the pancakes and panegyrics. 
I was so pleased I almost blushed. 
I say I arose from my slumbers, but that is 
not an exact statement. I was aroused from 
my slumbers, for Blanton went out in the dawn 
and let forth his morning whoop. It is the same 
as he gives forth when riding hard through the 
hills encouraging the hounds on a trail. It sim¬ 
ply means, “Whoop her up,” or, if you are still 
in bed, “Get up.” So I got up. I suppose he 
has done it so often, more than twenty thou¬ 
sand mornings, that he does it unconsciously. 
But he does it boldly; like a challenge. As 
much as to say, “I am keeping up my lick; keep 
up yours.” I do not mistrust that, when he 
goes to heaven, after he is over a hundred years 
old, he will get up there in the morning, go 
forth into the heavenly dawn and let forth that 
same blood-curdling yell, startling the angels and 
doubtless giving rise to animadversions from the 
chamberlain of the palace, but God, one feels 
assured, will only smile. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
“A good way to encourage robins and blue¬ 
birds,” says W. T. Hornaday in his “American 
Natural History,” “is to kill the English spar¬ 
rows.” This is excellent advice, so far as it 
goes, but that is not very far. Since last April, 
when the bluebirds firs., discussed among them¬ 
selves the leasing of my bird bo'xes for the sea¬ 
son, until the present time I have been shoot¬ 
ing sparrows at every opportunity, and they seem 
to thrive on lead. Where there were a few then 
there are scores now, and the more .22’s I feed 
them with, the better they seem to like my back 
yard. The neighbors’ cats, too, have found good 
picking where there was none before, and range 
about under the bird boxes to see what dainty 
morsels are waiting for them. 
Generally I shoot a sparrow or two every 
morning, possibly one in the evening, and a few 
others on Sundays, so that the total so far rep¬ 
resents a respectable bag, but I entertain few 
hopes of exhausting the supply this year, unless 
a sparrow epidemic comes along to assist. 
The English sparrow is credited with a good 
deal of shrewdness my particular pests have not 
shown. For example, I have crippled several 
—not intentionally—and was foolish enough to 
fancy these would in some way warn their 
friends that the “hornets” in that back yard 
possessed powerful stings, and to keep away; but 
some of these clipped and tailless rascals have 
been the most persistent disputants for the pos¬ 
session of the bluebirds’ boxes. 
During my sparrow sniping I have had several 
curious shots. On one occasion I killed two 
sparrows with one bullet. Just as I was about 
to fire at one of the rascals his mate perched 
beside him, and I got both. Another time I 
killed a sparrow that was hanging head down 
from a perch—a very unnatural position for 
these robbers. Still another shot, aimed too low, 
struck the perch on which a sparrow sat in front 
of the box, and the latter, unharmed, returned 
to the box and seemed astonished to find no 
place to alight. 
I still have hopes that the robins and blue¬ 
birds will take courage, though I confess that 
trying to exterminate the sparrows by shooting 
is much like lowering the level of the sea with 
a teacup. The robins whip the sparrows every 
time, and so do the bluebirds, though the latter 
are annoyed a great deal. Grizzly King. 
