June 12, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
929 
earth” or ‘‘land of the giant cactus,” for that 
matter they still claim it—and that they were 
driven from there into the cliffs by a monster 
serpent. They even give the successive sites 
of their cliff dwelling halts to their present 
abode. It may well be that the monster serpent 
was the emblematic serpent of the ancient 
Mexicans. 
I camped the third night six miies up the 
Salt River from Roosevelt, at the abandoned 
Grapevine Ranch, which is soon to be buried—■ 
broad fields and lovely groves and all. deep 
under the waters of the reservoir. All the way 
up from Mesa I had never for an hour been 
out of sight of quail, but here along the river 
I found them especially numerous, actually in 
coveys of hundreds. I fired no shot at them, 
but I did kill a couple of young cottontails for 
my evening and morning meal. 
The next morning I made a very early start, 
and leaving the river a couple of miles above 
the ranch, began the ascent into turkej" land, 
the Sierra Anches, following a trail used by 
cattlemen and others. It was a blistering hot 
day, the heat rising from the desert in simmer¬ 
ing, pulsating waves. There was not a breath 
of stirring air, save here and there a whirl¬ 
wind, marked by a thin rising column of dust 
and dead twigs. The way for some miles was 
up, an ever-steepening slope to the first rim of 
the mountains, then along that to the second 
rim, both of them rising in abrupt walls of red 
dolomite in places nearly a thousand feet high, 
and impassable, I should say, except in the one 
place where the trail pierces each one. At noon 
I was half way along the second rim and halted 
for a rest at a fine spring. I had left the desert, 
and it was much cooler here; cactus had given 
place to yucca and mescal; I sat in the shade 
of scrub oaks instead of mesquites. There was 
a grand view of Salt River and its valley several 
thousand feet below me. Both the first and sec¬ 
ond mesa, I found, were pierced by a box 
canon of trembidous depth. I was on the edge 
of it, a red cliff that made one’s head swim to 
look over. 
About two o’clock I packed up and went on, 
heading for a notch in the mountain? three or 
four miles to the northwest. The further I 
went the larger were the oaks. Then I saw 
some nianzanitas and madrones, and next, in 
the bottom of an arroyo, through which flowed 
a trickle of water, there were some large 
sycamores. Passing the streamlet, the trail ran 
along the mountainside where there was as 
much grass as brush, and here I first saw the 
fool quail, to my mind the most beautiful of all 
the quail family. There was a whole covey of 
them, and some hopped up on the bushes and 
stared at me, while others walked away in no 
particular hurry. With a convenient stick I 
killed two of them, just as I have many a time 
Franklin grouse in the Northern Rockies. 
Were it not for their more brilliant plumage, I 
would have said that they were the young of 
that grouse. 
A half hour later I came to the summit, and 
the edge of the pines, and to turkey tracks in 
the dusty trail. Turkey tracks unmistakably, 
even a small tail feather. I went on more care¬ 
fully, walking ahead of Ruminator, gun ready 
for instant use. I was now in a forest of big 
trees, the southern edge, in fact, of the largest 
virgin forest we have left outside of Alaska. It 
stretches away eastward into New Mexico and 
northward into Colorado, and covers the greater 
part of Northeastern Arizona. We should all 
be thankful that it was made a forest reserve 
before the lumber sharks had a chance to 
despoil it. 
Presently I came to a little stream of the 
purest, clearest kind of water, and following it 
down a couple of miles, I found a fine grassy 
park of forty or fifty acres bordering it. Here I 
went into camp and at sunset had the tent up, 
a fire burning, and was content. The cool air, 
the odor of the pines, the murmur of the 
streamlet were most grateful after the stifling 
heat of the dry old desert. 
I was hardly out of bed the next morning, 
when I began to make discoveries. Some trees 
along the edge of the park proved to be black 
walnuts. I had not expected to see them in 
Arizona, but there they were, laden with nuts, 
and some squirrels were hard at wiirk in the 
branches, gray squirrels, too. another old ac¬ 
quaintance. I got out my .22 and shut one, then 
another, but when I went to pick them up I 
found that the last killed was a stranger to me, 
a squirrel I had never seen- or heard of. It was 
somewhat larger than the gray, with ludicruusly 
long tufts of hair on its ears, and burnt-colored 
fur adown its spine. Locally it is called the 
lynx-eared squirrel. I saw a great many of 
them during the trip, and found them fully as 
well flavored and delicate meat as the gray. 
They do not bark like the latter, but make a 
peculiar, booming cry. [Abert’s squirrel— 
Editor.] 
After taking care of the burros, I made a 
little tour around the edge of the park and 
along the creek, looking for signs, as a hunter 
will, and was well rewarded. There were 
numerous tracks of deer in the sand bars. 
Here a big mountain lion had j>imped the 
stream, and there a 'coon had prowled along 
the water’s edge in search of frogs. Rack in 
the timber there were many wild grape vines— 
laden with fruit—clinging to the oaks, and torn 
leaves, stripped clusters, bare scratched ground 
around them were evidence of turkeys. I went 
back to camp and contentedly cooked and ate 
breakfast. 
When leaving the coast, I invested in a gun, 
the like of which I had never used, but—as I 
thought it would—it has proved especially 
adapted to the shooting in this Southwest coun¬ 
try. It is a combination gun, the right barrel 
•30-30, the other twelve gauge, and a sure meat 
getter, always ready for whatever one sights, 
be it quail or turkeys, deer or bighorn—any 
creature from a humming bird to a big bear. 
For turkey shooting it is almost indispensable, 
at long distances a hard-nosed bullet bein.g the 
thing, and at lesser range a charge of BB’s 
stopping the flying or swiftly running bird. But 
first, you have to see your turkey. 
Imagine, though, the feelings of a sportsman 
armed with only a shotgun when he sees a band 
of turkeys busily feeding seventy-five or a hun¬ 
dred yards away, and they disappear at his first 
step toward a nearer position; or if. carrying a 
rifle, he suddenly flushes some of the birds at 
close range and they go skurryipg through the 
brush or sailing away over the treetops! I for 
one wish to be spared that sensation. 
As the wind, what little there was, came out 
of the north, I took my new weapon and 
strolled down the valley, crossing and reerpss- 
ing the little stream. At one crossing I found 
in the gravel a thin, gray lava nietaie worn al¬ 
most through by constant grindings of acorns, 
mute evidence that at some time in the past this 
had been a camping ground of the .Apaches, or 
some tribe preceding their occupancy of the 
country. There was much turkey sign, and I 
went on and on until noon, expecting to see 
some of the birds every moment. I did not 
believe it possible not to see some, for I walked 
very slowly and noiselessly, carefully examining 
every bit of ground ahead. I was disappointed, 
however, and after a sandwich and a smoke, I 
turned westward up a long pine ridge which 
eventually brought me to the summit of a table- 
topped mountain sparsely grown with very large 
trees. I crossed the plateau and sat down on 
the edge of it. where I could look away west¬ 
ward at an immense jumble of vari-colored bare 
and timbered mountains. I rolled a cigarette, 
lighted it. and was settling myself for a good 
long rest, when I heard a twig snap in the 
timber, and looking down, I had my first view 
of the funny little white-tail deer of the country, 
a doe and two fawns. So small were they that 
I could scarce believe they were whitetails 
until I saw the doe partly raise and twitch her 
white-tipped. fan-like appendage in the char¬ 
acteristic manner of her kind. I wanted some 
venison, but I had not the heart to shoot one 
of the dainty fawns, much less the mother, and 
let them pass on under the ledge and out of 
view without betraying my presence. 
Recrossing the table top ofter an bour or 
more, I struck off down the mountain diagonal¬ 
ly toward camp, and when nearly home, jumped 
a mule deer in the bottom of a narrow arroyo. 
I had but a glimpse of him through the brush 
until he reached the summit of the slope, and 
there he paused to take a look at me as un¬ 
sophisticated mule deer will, north and south. 
I fired the first shot from my new gun, and 
down he fell with a bullet in his brisket, and 
was quite dead when I reached him. He was an 
old gray-muzzled fellow, very fat, with very 
small ordinary velveted antlers, and was of 
small size himself. 
I did no hunting the next day, going with 
Ruminator after the deer carcass, and then 
cutting the meat in small strips and hanging it 
on a rack to dry, all but the tenderloins, which 
I reserved for broiled steaks. Morning and 
evening I listened intently for ibe gobble- 
gobble-gobble of the turkey cocks of which I 
had read so much in shooting lore, but not a 
gobble did I bear; nothing at all, in fact, ex¬ 
cept the squawk of a raven and the later hoot¬ 
ing of owls, and still later in the night the 
hoarse yowling of a big cat tbat had scented my 
deer meat. 
With renewed hope, I started out the next 
morning, this time going eastward to a moun-' 
tainside, where there was about as much grass 
and gravel and rock as there was manzanita and 
madrone brush. It was early; there was still 
dew on grass and leaves. I went to the upper 
edge of the brush patch, climbed upon a ledge 
in the edge of the pines and sat down to let the 
turkeys hunt me if they would. And they did. 
It was all of two hours later that I fancied I 
heard a “quit! quit! quit!” down in the brush to 
my right, and my heart beat faster than it had 
in many a year at the approach of game. It is' 
