In Arizona 
I.—Sojourning in the Superstition Mountains— 
The Fate of a Boom Town—The 
Old-Timer’s Treasure 
By J. W. SCHULTZ 
Author of “Ny Life as an Indian,” ”Life Among the Blackfeet,” “Floating Down the Missouri,” etc. 
R UMINATOR and I have just returned 
from a trip to the little railroad station 
after various expected books and pos¬ 
sible letters, and here we are back in our camp 
5that is perched on a mountainside, overlooking 
the great desert. The sight of a fast express 
'train has somewhat disturbed our equanimity; 
but here in this peaceful spot I shall soon for- 
rget the incident—forget for the time, at least, 
^hat some day (may it be long in coming) I 
must climb aboard one of those trains and be 
rushed back into the thick of things that try 
men’s souls. 
Ruminator has already forgotten. Yonder he 
stands under a mesquite tree, lazily working his 
foot-long, fuzzy ears, entirely oblivious of the 
tender, green, nutritious tips of the limb just 
before his nose. But why should he feast? Did 
you ever know a philosopher who was continu¬ 
ally gorging and drinking? Certainly not. 
Ruminator is a philosopher; he eats little and 
drinks a modicum of water about once a week. 
All burros, I think, are philosophers—so set 
in their ways that, however wrong, once they 
are convinced of a certain thing, no argument, 
not even a physical one, can make them change 
their view. Down at the railroad station 
Ruminator believed that the oncoming express 
was a monster bent upon his destruction; forth-, 
with he turned and fled madly out over the 
desert despite my frantic sawing on his bit. 
Nor. after I finally got him stopped, would he 
return. He believed, in spite of my arguments 
—and they were many—that the monster was 
there awaiting him. Finally I gave up, fastened 
the lariat to a grease wood, and walked the mile 
in and back with the load he should have 
carried. Ah, well! he packed me and my parcels 
valiantly enough the fourteen miles to camp, 
and he is so diminutive that when I bestride 
him my feet almost touch the ground. 
Why, I wonder, is this magnificent plain of 
Southern Arizona called the Desert? Yonder 
it lies in all its greenness, stretching away 
southward into Old Mexico, and it is always 
green; the gray green of sage, vivid green of 
grease wood and cactus, yellow-green of palo 
yerde, and dark green of mesquite groves. 
From its boundless level rise range after range 
of black, rough mountains lying upon it like 
so many fabled monsters. But at sunset and 
at sunrise they are blood red, and rose pink, 
contrasting sharply with the dark plain and the 
deep blue sky. How I love to gaze upon it all! 
To me there is nothing repellant in it, and 
therein is it different from the treacherous sea. 
Why, it is a very mother to those who know it. 
J. W. SCHULTZ. 
far more kindly than the forests where some¬ 
times snows lie deep. For your sustenance it 
supports millions of quail, rabbits, and doves, 
numbers of deer, antelope and bighorn; and the 
purest water it stores up for you in the thick 
body of the barrel cactus. 
My tent is pitched under a large mesquite 
and only a few yards from a spring of pure 
water, the only perpetually flowing one for sev¬ 
eral miles around. My presence has scared 
away the deer, lynxes, coyotes, and occasional 
lions that frequented it, and they go elsewhere 
to slake their thirst. But not so with the 
smaller life of the mountainside. The number 
and variety of the feathered kind that twitter 
and sing about it and quarrel with one another 
for the crumbs I throw out is astonishing. 
Mockingbirds sing in the tree over my head; 
Mexican flycatchers of fire red plumage flash 
in and out of the thickets; cactus wrens shriek 
and chatter, hummingbirds constantly are seek¬ 
ing honey in the yellow flowers of a large 
leafed plant nearby, and at intervals come flocks 
of quail—Gambel’s partridge. You can hear the 
quail far off crying mac-krak-en, mac-krak-en, 
mac-krak-er-gee, and then they soon appear— 
so swiftly do they travel—led by some wise old 
cock. They are nervous, and here where 
seldom shot at, far from timid birds, passing 
most of their time quarreling with one another. 
They even attempt, each one, to appropriate 
the whole spring to his individual use. Only 
those who have been over the ground can 
realize what vast numbers of these birds there 
are in Southern Arizona. 
It is in early morning, and again toward sun¬ 
set that the rabbits come to the spring—big 
jacks and little cottontails—and about noon a 
lone squirrel, who has his home in a nearby 
ledge, comes for his sup of water. I hear him 
barking frequently during the day, for all the 
world like a gray squirrel. He looks like one 
of that variety, and perhaps he is. One day I 
saw him climb the spiny side of a giant cactus 
with amazing rapidity, forty feet up to its still 
more spiny summit. Now, that was a feat, in 
my estimation. How does he manage to do it 
without sticking himself full of needles? 
When I want a few birds or other game for 
the pot, I go several miles away to do my 
hunting, and thus I never alarm these delight¬ 
ful creatures and have them always with me 
for my contemplation; and what a pleasure it 
is to watch them! The more I see of them, 
the more am I inclined to give up the gun; 
but—a man must eat. 
How I do love the warm sunshine and dry 
air of the Arizona winters. A half-dozen nights 
during the winter there was frost, but not 
enough to kill the leaves on the cottonwoods 
by the spring. There was some rain, but not a 
day passed that the sun did not appear some¬ 
time between dawn and dark. 
•Three miles east of my camp there is an¬ 
other spring. It can be located from afar by 
the big cottonwoods growing along its border, 
and thus I first discovered it. Thither I re¬ 
paired one afternoon in quest of a deer, and 
found instead a little tent gleaming white in 
the grove. A couple of burros were grazing 
nearby; a pack and a riding saddle were piled 
against it. Inside there was a folding cot with 
clean, heavy blankets, a canvas war bag, various 
little sacks of provisions and what not, neatly 
piled. In front of the tent, beside an iron bar- 
crossed stone fire-place, were ranged a few 
cooking utensils scoured and spotlessly clean. 
A fire was burning in the hearth, a pot of some¬ 
thing simmering over it. I sat down to await 
the camper’s appearance, already prepossessed 
in his favor. There must be some good points. 
