490 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April i, I9 11 - 
hunted a day or two more in that camp, but 
there was not time to try another placeman 
there seemed to be no sheep at Las Palmitas, 
so, after a long council of war, we decide 
give up the sheep hunting entirely and start for 
Calexico, this time going along the foot of he 
mountains instead of along the edge o 
laguna, the way we had come in. 
j g M. was very much disappointed and could 
only comfort himself with the reflection that it 
is the ordinary luck of sheep hunters to do with¬ 
out. He said that he did not mind not getting 
sheep as long as they stayed away from him, u 
when they came and looked at him, he thought 
that he ought to have had a shot. 
Having decided on our return, we started out 
the first day and crossed back to Valdez Tanaka, 
where we spent that night and the next day 
crossed once more to the side of the foothills 
of the Sierra Gigantica toward Calexico, our 
trail running parallel to the side of the Laguna, 
but ten miles away from it. The first night we 
turned up into an arroyo in the mountains to 
camp, and stopped in a valley called Palm-mar, 
or Sea of Palms. 
This arroyo was composed of sand and white 
granite and was full of wild date palms. Ihey 
were beautiful trees and bore great quantities of 
fruit. They were supposed to have been origi¬ 
nally planted by the Spanish missionaries, who 
first came to Lower California, but they did not 
in the least resemble the ordinary date of com¬ 
merce. The trees were of two varieties. One 
kind bore great bunches of fruit that looked like 
a black currant, but was only a hard stone with 
a black skin on the outside of it. The other 
bore a fruit about the size of a hazel nut, but 
it too, was nothing but a large stone with a 
thin skin on the surface. Both of these, how¬ 
ever, had a strong date flavor, and they were 
• much eaten by the coyotes, as under all the trees 
we found a great many droppings of the coyotes, 
filled with the stones of the dates, and we saw 
two or three coyotes sneaking off through t e 
palms as we came up to make camp. 
The wide arroyo, with the masses of gieen 
palms, made it by far the most beautiful and 
picturesque place we had seen in Lower Cali¬ 
fornia. There did not seem to be any use stop¬ 
ping there to hunt, as Captain Funcke said there 
were few sheep in that part of the mountains, 
though occasionally some were seen. 1 he next 
morning we started on the third day of our re¬ 
turn march and pressed along all day through 
the desert at the foot of the mountains. After 
noon we reached a portion of the mountains 
where hills of water-worn stone jutted into the 
desert, our trail running along near the base of 
these cliffs. In the early part of the afternoon 
I walked in front of the pack train and saw 
another deer, but only got a glimpse and had 
no chance to shoot. After giving up any chance 
at the deer, I dropped in the rear with Eleno 
and spent my time in practicing my meagre 
Spanish. 
About 3130 we suddenly saw Captain Funcke 
and J. G. M. getting off their horses, and the 
pack animals behind them began to scatter out 
among the trees and start to feed. Looking up 
on a cliff a half mile away we saw a ram and a 
ewe standing looking at us. I at once got off 
my horse, and with the glasses saw that it was 
a good sized ram, which I told the cook I 
thought would measure about fourteen inches 
base by twenty-eight or twenty-nine inches in 
length. We could see J. G. M. and the captain 
sneaking off through the desert preparatory to 
going up the arroyo behind the ram and trying 
to get a shot at him, and I again had the ex¬ 
citement of seeing the hunt. 
After the ram had looked at us for a few 
minutes, three ewes and a small ram came up 
and joined him in watching us, which they 
seemed to do with great interest. After a time 
the ram, having evidently satisfied his curiosity, 
went to the edge of the rocks toward us, in¬ 
tending to climb down. I could see his every 
movement clearly through the glasses. After 
examining the rock for some time he seemed 
to think it was too steep to walk down, so he 
tested it with his fore feet to see that he would 
not slip, and then calmly sat down on his rump 
with his hind legs stretched out in front of him, 
and bracing himself with his fore legs, slid down 
the cliff thirty or forty feet until he came to a 
shelf where he could stand up again. It was a 
ridiculous exhibition, as he looked very much 
like a small boy sliding down hill. 
When the ram got to the shelf of the rocks 
he stood up and started to eat at a bisnaga grow¬ 
ing there, but I was unable to tell whether he 
was trying to get inside of it or merely to pick 
off certain seed vessels which sometimes grow 
on the outside. I think on the whole that he 
was merely eating the seed vessels. 
I was somewhat worried that J. G. M. and 
the captain would get around to where they ex¬ 
pected to find the ram and not know what had 
become of him, so I told Eleno to get on his 
horse and ride after them, which he did and 
soon returned, saying that they were going up 
the arroyo into the mountains, and had seen him 
from the desert, and that he had waved to them 
that the ram was on our side of the peak. 
The time passed with interminable slowness, 
and it seemed to me that they would never get 
to the scene of action. Finally the ram went 
up on top of the peak again and walked down 
on the other side out of our sight. I started 
running for a little cliff nearby in the hope of 
climbing up and again locating the ram, when 
suddenly I heard the roar of J. G. M.’s rifle 
from the mountains. In a moment this was fol¬ 
lowed by three more shots, and then by five 
more in quick succession, which resounded from 
the heights. At the ninth shot I heard a faint 
whoop from the captain, and I at once knew 
that the ram must have been struck, so Eleno 
and I got on our horses and rode up to the 
bottom of the rocks where the ram was first 
seen, and climbed up to the top through a gulch 
where it was possible to ascend. 
As we climbed, I knew that the game was 
not over, for we heard J. G. M.’s rifle twice 
more. When we looked over the summit we 
could see J. G. M. and the captain walking down 
the arroyo, and when I shouted to them, the 
captain yelled to me to bring my rifle and car¬ 
tridges and come quick, as the ram was badly 
crippled, but they only had three cartridges left. 
I had left my rifle on my saddle, and I had to 
return the way I had come and then run round 
the base of the peak, about a mile through the 
desert, to get up the arroyo to where the cap¬ 
tain and J. G. M. were. When I finally arrived 
I was wet to the skin and out of breath, and 
found them in the same condition. We started 
up the side of the mountain where the ram had 
gone and soon struck a blood trail. This the 
captain told me was caused by the first shot, 
which had been fired at him from directly below 
at about a hundred yards. 
This trail ran along the face of the cliffs until 
it came to where the ram had been shot again. 
There was a splash on the rocks where the heavy 
405 bullet had gone straight through the ram 
and struck on the rocks on the other side. The 
captain pointed out where J. G. M. stood when 
the shot was fired, and I should say that it was 
well over 350 yards. The shot had knocked the 
ram thirty or forty feet down the side of the 
hill and the captain had shouted, thinking he 
was dead, but he had nevertheless got up again 
and gone on, though very sick. We fully ex¬ 
pected to find him around the next little bend 
in the cliffs, and we stopped a moment before 
turning it. As we looked out over the laguna 
I could see the sun had set and the sky was 
glowing with a wonderful sunset. I at. once 
thought, “What a beautiful sunset! And if we 
don’t get this ram within ten minutes, it will be 
too dark to see.” 
The next moment J. G. M. stepped round the 
corner with his rifle ready. The ram was lying 
down twenty yards away just under the rim 
rock, and as J. G. M. appeared, he leaped to his 
feet and went up over the side like a cat. J. 
G. M. fired both barrels at him without effect, 
and I at once passed him my rifle and he fired 
a third shot just as the ram passed over the 
top. The third shot struck the rocks just under 
the three or four inches of the ram’s back that 
showed as he fired. When we went up to the 
top of the rock there was no sign of the ram, 
and it was fast getting dark. We turned down 
into the arroyo, Captain Funcke in advance, and 
he caught sight of the ram going down. We 
followed the blood trail again until we came 
to where it led along the edge of a precipice, 
and here we lost it in the darkness. We hunted 
up and down for it carefully for a few minutes, 
but finally it became so dark it was merely a 
question of getting down out of the mountains 
to our horses, and we reluctantly gave it up and 
climbed down, got on the horses and pushed on 
until 8 o’clock that night, when we camped in 
another arroyo near a stream of running water. 
We had great hopes of getting the ram the 
next morning, but it looked to me like a diffi¬ 
cult proposition. Whenever I thought of the 
splash of blood and flesh on the rock, I felt 
that he was shot through the body, and if so, 
I knew we would get him, but on the other hand 
I could not feel certain that it might not have 
been a superficial wound through the fleshy part 
of the leg, so that the ram might go miles be¬ 
fore he died. J. G. M. was, of course, greatly 
disappointed, as it seemed that he could not 
break his luck, no matter how hard he tried. 
He and the captain and Eleno were up before 
daybreak and off early on the burros to the place 
where the ram had last been seen. 
There was a hot spring about a mile up the 
ravine, so I took my rifle and soap and a towel 
and went up to it and had a bath in the first hot 
water I came to. I returned about 10 o clock. 
I felt sure that it would not be long before the 
hunters returned if they were successful, so I 
took my glasses, and walking down the arroyo 
about a mile, climbed a cliff and began to ex¬ 
amine the country. After a little I saw some¬ 
thing moving down the desert, and looking at 
