June 19, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
969 
“Well, I didn't talk any more about going 
over to the Cocopah Mountains, but I thought 
a lot about it. Joe and I went up the Hardy’s 
Colorado and prospected the range alongside 
of it for six weeks, but found nothing more than 
some streaks of copper. Then, loading my 
burros with deer meat, I lit out across the 
desert for Yuma. There were a lot of pros¬ 
pectors in the place, as usual. I sat around for 
a week or more listening to ’em, sizing ’em up. 
and then I approached a fellow named Ike 
Morris with the proposition I had in mind, 
choosing him because of his quietness and his 
sure, steady and forceful ways. I told him 
what Joe had told me about the Cocopah range, 
and asked if he would take chances on a little 
passeur down there. 
“ ‘Sure I will,’ says he. ‘ ’Twon’t be the first 
time I’ve invaded the Injun country, and I 
reckon ’twon’t be the last. I figure that you 
and me can about stand off the whole Cocopah 
tribe if it comes to a show down, but of course 
we don’t want to fight ’em; the 
idea is to sneak in and see what’s 
there, and sneak out again. If 
we strike it rich, we’ll stake off 
some claims and then raise such 
a stampede as will make a white 
man's country of it.’ 
“We got every thing ready 
packed our burros and were 
ferried across the river that 
day, letting on we were going 
to the San Bernardino desert 
on a trip. We made camp on 
the other side, but as soon as 
night came packed up again and 
traveled away down the river, 
going maybe twenty miles by 
sun up, and then laying off until 
the next morning. 
“That was as far as we dared 
follow the river, for not far be¬ 
low was a band of Cocopahs. 
From there we struck straight 
out east across the barrenest 
desert you ever saw, in places deep sand, 
and where that played out it was a sort of 
spongy alkali gravel and earth in which the 
burros well-nigh bogged down. We had five 
gallons of water to start with and it lasted 
us all that day, and until the afternoon of 
the next one, when we struck a spur of the 
range we were heading for, and began looking 
for cottonwood trees in the arroyos; for a 
cottonwood, you know, never grows in these 
west mountains except beside a living spring. 
Well, we couldn’t see any, so along toward sun 
down we unpacked and began to tap some 
reservoirs that old mother earth always has a 
plenty for those who know how. 
“It’s surprisin’ what a lot of fool men there is 
in this world. Not a year, not a month goes 
by but what some one dies from thirst on 
these Arizony and Californy deserts, and all 
the time there’s water a plenty, or something 
nearly as good, right to hand. I bet you I can 
take a gun and a knife and travel from one 
end of these deserts to the other and never 
really suffer from thirst. Flere’s these ‘barrel’ 
or ‘fish hook’ cactus; they’re plum full of water. 
All you got to do is to slice off the top.of one, 
make hash of the inside and squeeze it in your 
hand, or better still, in a sack, and you get all 
the water you want. It’s kind of soapy look¬ 
ing, and maybe a little thick; but it’s water all 
right, and harmless. You can drink all you 
want without fear of its hurting you. On the 
flat, barren, alkali desert these are not to be 
found. If you can, keep to the mountains where 
they do grow, even if you have to go miles and 
miles out of your course. But if you must cross 
the barren places, carry a sack of the cactus 
with you to squeeze out as wanted. And then 
there’s your gun. I never yet saw a desert that 
didn’t have a few jack rabbits on it. Well, 
their blood is a pretty good substitue for water. 
’Twill keep a man alive anyhow, as I proved 
one time. No, sir, no one need die from thirst 
in the desert if he only knows how. 
“It didn’t take long to get enough cactus 
juice for ourselves, and to hack out some 
chunks for the burros to chew. Then we fixed 
a good camp, intending to prospect a few days 
around there, but that wasn’t to be; we had 
located in the middle of a regular tarantula 
SAI.MON HUNTING. 
From an old print in the Woodward Collection. 
town, as we found before night fall. I have 
seen several such places, and they’re always 
the same, always when the earth is a reddis’n- 
brown. just about the color of the big spiders. 
We killed a couple while putting up the tent, 
and then when we went wandering around after 
fire wood we met up with ’em at every turn. 
It was too late by that time to move on, so we 
sat up by the fire until the night got real cold, 
and even then we crawled into our blankets 
feeling awful creepy, and you bet we shook out 
the bedding careful firsl. 
“In the morning we went on south, following 
the foot of the range and keeping a sharp watch 
for Injuns, and for signs of water in the 
arroyos. In the latter part of the afternoon we 
were passing the mouth of a big arroyo, when 
I spied the green tip of a cottonwood just 
showing above a point of rock that ran down 
into it. We rode up that way, and on turning 
the bend, came to the purtiest little grove of 
cottonwood and willow you ever saw in a bar¬ 
ren land. And right in the middle of it was a 
small spring oozing out of a fissure in the bed 
rock and trickling down the wash for thirty or 
forty feet, where it disappeared in the gravel. 
What’s more, the banks of it was packed down 
solid as a floor by the mountain sheep and deer. 
It was pretty fair water, too, having very little 
alkali for that country. We drank a lot, and 
then made camp, not at the spring, for we 
didn’t want to scare the game, but a quarter of 
a mile down from it toward the desert, and in 
the arroyo, where our tent could not be seen 
from any distance in any direction. * 
“Leaving Morris to get breakfast the next 
morning, I took my rifle and a canteen and 
sneaked up to the spring in the moonlight and 
maybe an hour before daybreak. I approached 
it very careful, walking the last couple of hun¬ 
dred yards in my stocking feet, but had my 
trouble for nothing; there wasn’t so much as a 
jack rabbit in sight. I climbed up in the rocks 
above the spring and sat down in a nest of 
boulders to watch for something to come to 
water. The sun rose after a while, coloring 
red the tips of the range, and on the sky line of 
the nearest mountain I saw a band of sheep. 
Six, eight, nine, eleven head I counted as they 
came up on it from the other side, stood 
bunched together for a minute or 
so, and then started down toward 
me in single file, led by a fine, 
big old ram. 
“ ‘Meat in the pot, sure,’ I 
said to myself, and I scrouged 
down still lower in the boulder 
pile, took off my hat, cocked my 
little old Henry rifle, and watch¬ 
ing the spring under the cotton¬ 
woods, waited for the sheep to 
come. It might have been half 
an hour before they showed up 
on a ridge three or four hundred 
yards away, then they dived 
down off of it and out of sight 
into the wash, a minute or two 
later coming to the spring on the 
dead run and making a big 
clatter over the gravel. They 
pushed, and crowded, and butted 
one another, each one trying to 
hog all the water, so I waited 
for a shot until they should settle 
down. Besides, I wanted the big ram, and he 
was right in the middle of the bunch, only his 
back showing. Lord! but ’twas lucky I waited 
for a clear sight at him, for all to once bang! 
bang! bang! went three guns, and startled me 
so that I come near jumping straight up. I 
saw two sheep fall, another with a broken hind¬ 
leg trail after the rest a-flying back up the 
arroyo and an Injun running after it. Two more 
Injuns came to the spying, talking sort of ex¬ 
cited, laid down their guns, dragged the dead 
sheep back from the water, and began skinning 
’em. Bang! went a gun up the arroyo. ‘He’s 
got the cripple,’ I said to myself. 
“Well, that was a fine mixup I had got into. 
I wasn’t scared about my safety for the time 
being, because the Injuns hadn’t seen me, 
and even if they should, I^ knew I could pot 
them, and their partner further up the, arroyo. 
But that wouldn’t be the end of it. There 
were a lot more of ’em camped somewhere 
nearby of course, and missing,these, they would 
hunt around, find our camp or our trail, and 
the whole outfit would be after us with the odds 
all in their favor. We could stand ’em off all 
right in the day time, most likely, but in the 
night the chances were that they’d get us. 
Maybe some of ’em had already seen our camp, 
