June ig, igog.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
971 
remain there that night, so, watering the ani¬ 
mals and filling our canteens at the spring, and 
eating a hurried bite, we packed up and traveled 
down the arroyo to the desert, and then turned 
northward along the edge of the range. And 
we kept going all night, just as fast as we could 
urge the burros along. We must have made 
twenty miles by sun up, when we unpacked and 
rested a couple of hours. Not more than that, 
though. We knew what the Cocopahs could 
do afoot—a fifty or seventy-five mile run isn’t 
anything to ’em—and we wanted to get plumb 
out of their country before that dead Injun in 
the canon was found. 
“We didn’t make it. Along in the afternoon, 
away back on our trail we spotted a bunch of 
’em following us. We couldn’t tell how many; 
at least fifteen or twenty, we thought. They 
didn’t try to get nearer, just keeping us in sight 
and waiting for night to fall. You bet they had 
us guessing. We talked up all sorts of plans to 
outwit ’em, or to stand ’em off, but we just 
couldn’t devise any way that bid fair to work 
for a long time. At last, along toward sun 
down, Morris proposed that we stop at the 
next soft sandy place, unpack, throw and hog- 
tie the burros in a circle, pile sand in front of 
’em, and lie down in the breast works they 
would form. The moon would be shining all 
night, and we would be able to see the Injuns 
when they approached; they would scarcely 
make a rush in the face of our repeating rifles.' 
“ ‘Man!’ said I, ‘but that’s a fine plan, and I 
believe it will work. Where did you get it?’ 
“ ‘I saw a horse once that was trained to 
lie down,’ he told me, ‘and happening to think 
of it, I figured that we could throw our borros. 
Well, here’s some soft sand, let’s go at it.’ 
“We stopped and stripped off the packs in a 
hurry, and in less than half an hour we had 
the five burros down, the sand heaped in front 
of ’em, and everything in good shape for the 
night. Not an Injun was in sight. We ate a 
cold bite of jerky and bread, had a couple of 
swallows from the pint or so of water left, and 
laid down, Morris facing the north, and I our 
back trail. The hours passed. We had no 
witch, but the big dipper was a pretty gOod 
time piece as it swung around. About ten 
o’clock I told my partner to sleep a while, and 
he was soon snoring. I sat up on a roll of 
bedding where I could see all around. It was 
about one o’clock when I fancied I saw a dark 
bear-shaped object moving toward us through 
the scattering salt bush, and I gave Morris a 
poke. He sat up at once, and I pointed out the 
place. ‘I thought I saw something crawling 
over there,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll watch in that di¬ 
rection, you turn and look the other way.’ 
“ ‘I see an Injun,’ said he presently, ‘no, 
there’s two, no, three of ’em crawlin’ in.’ 
“ ‘Yes, and I see nine,’ I told him. Let’s 
wait until they come a little closer, and then 
turn loose. But just suit yourself. I’m ready 
any time.’ 
“In about a minute Morris fired and we heard 
the bullet thud, then a yell of pain, and then 
Injuns rose up all around us and started run¬ 
ning in and firing at us. Gosh! how we did 
make our Henrys spit, and at first it seemed to 
no purpose. They kept coming, all the same, 
and I made up my mind that we were goners. 
Still, I did my best and so did Morris, and as 
they came nearer we did better work, dropping 
several of ’em. They couldn’t have been more 
than fifty yards away when I hit one, and with 
a yell he went down, and hollered something to 
his partners. I guess he was their leader, 
maybe a big medicine man. Anyway, they 
rushed to him, lifted him up and started back 
on the run. Morris and I firing at the bunch, 
and hitting one anyhow, before they finally dis¬ 
appeared. 
“They didn’t charge us again. When day 
broke we could see four dead ones lying here 
and there on the sand, and there were no doubt 
others wounded who had crawled away. We 
untied the burros, but most of ’em were so stiff 
that we had to rub and work their legs before 
they could get up. Then we put on the packs 
and lit out, and got back safe to Yuma two 
days later. We didn’t see anything more of the 
Injuns, and you bet I never went down into 
that country again. More than once in Yuma 
I’ve noticed some of them Cocopahs looking 
at me mighty queerly, and so has Morris, so 
he says. I guess they knew who ’twas that 
found their turtle-god cave, all right, and killed 
at least five of ’em, and even after all these 
years I expect they wouldn’t do a thing to us 
if they had the chance. 
“Come on, let’s go home. We ain’t going to 
get a deer to-day and I’m fearful hungry.” 
We went. 
Taming Wild Birds of the Forest. 
Kansas City, Mo., June 10 .— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Early in July my son Everett and 
I took an oarsman, named Andrew Porter, and 
two halfbreed packers and went to a chain of 
lakes forty miles from the railroad to try for 
rainbow trout in an almost unfished territory. 
We reached the camping ground early in the 
afternoon during a cold rain after a walk of 
seven or eight miles through the wet forest. 
Our packers refused to wait and help us make 
camp, although offered additional compensation, 
and we had a busy evening trying to make our¬ 
selves comfortable. 
While preparing the evening meal I noticed 
a number of birds which appeared unusually 
tame. They were of the kind termed in dif¬ 
ferent places quinguish, whiskey-jack, camp- 
robber, Hudson’s Bay bird and Canadian mock¬ 
ingbird. I threw them some crumbs and 
coaxed them to come within a few. paces of 
me, then remarked to my son that I believed 
that within three days I could make them eat 
out of my hand, but he thought otherwise. How¬ 
ever, I not only did that, but more. 
I began by throwing food to them, each time 
a little closer to myself. The females appeared 
quite fearless, but the males more shy. In a 
day or two the females would hop along the 
ground and snatch bread from my hand, but 
the males never came nearer to me than two 
or three yards. I next tried to call the birds 
down from the trees to alight on my hand and 
eat from it. This required not a little coaxing. 
One female, while sitting on a low limb, would 
let me put my hand within a foot of her with¬ 
out flying away, and finally she could no longer 
resist the temptation of the bait, for she jumped 
down, snatched it, and flew off. Presently she 
returned for more and that time she stayed 
longer. Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, 
and desiring to know what I was made of, she 
tried biting my fingers. 
Andy, who had a camera, in the use of which 
none of us were very expert, took some snap¬ 
shots of the bird on my hand.* 
Within three days I could call down two or 
three of the females from the trees, .after a 
little persuasion, but they prefered to take their 
food in another way. We therefore stopped 
throwing scraps promiscuously around the camp 
■‘Several pictures were sent us, but are not reproduced. 
—Editor. 
and thus forced them either to come to us or 
go hungry. Later, Everett and Andy were suc¬ 
cessful in inducing them to come to the hand. 
I tried holding a small crust of bread between 
my teeth, putting a crumb on my hand, calling 
down the bird, and after she had eaten the 
crumb holding her close enough to my face to 
let her seize the crust. She would do so 
quickly and fly away with it, possibly to feed 
her young, but the hens always took the big 
pieces of bread to some distant tree. There 
were two or possibly three females out of the 
ten or twelve birds that congregated about camp 
which would feed in this manner. The fe¬ 
males looked so much alike that I could not be 
sure of the number thus tamed. 
We had improvised a table of small hewn 
logs in front of the tent, just large enough to 
hold the dishes when we were taking our meals, 
and several of the birds became so tame as to 
alight on the table when we were standing close 
to it and to help themselves to anything they 
wanted. Sometimes we had trouble in keeping 
them out of the frying-pan, for they were very 
fond of fish. Driving them away did not dis¬ 
turb them, as they would soon return. 
We tried to smoke some fish to take to our 
